When This Cruel War Is Over
by Ell Bee Someone Else Now
Summary: Multiple universes, characters, situations, and extreme cuteness, in which even Sunstreaker gets to take part.
1. Chapter 1

There is probably a particular circle of hell reserved for writers who cruise the various TF universes to yank mecha and situations from them as fiction-driven need be _and_ pick-and-choose which parts of Bayverse to use and which to ignore.

So! I've got my ticket; wanna come see what earned it?

I stole "mecha" as the plural of "mech" from taralynden. This plural of "mech" amuses us both; I haven't asked her if she did, but I think it comes of having been made to study Latin, which I did.

* * *

><p>Barricade went the last fifty feet of his journey very slowly because one strut wasn't holding. With every revolution of his left rear wheel, there was a loud "clunk," and a jolt of pain so bad it fritzed his optics.<p>

And the frellin' potholes in this so-called "road" weren't helping. Humans! Just because it was in the middle of a bunch of trees didn't mean it shouldn't be _paved_.

The last four hundred and fifty miles of this trip, that damage or injury or wear, or whatever the Pit it was, had limited him to twenty miles an hour, which kept him on the very smallest of back roads. He'd been in constant pain for the last three orn.

He topped the last ridge. So this was his destination? Barricade might have laughed out loud, but it would have gotten him shot.

With the last of his strength, he used a holoform to empty his interior while the sentry's back was to him, and transformed to root mode.

It was almost over, and he was so very tired.

He knelt, assuming the humiliating "surrender" position every Cybertronian understood. He didn't care about the humiliation, which surprised him: but his new programming said it was needful, and that was enough, apparently, to get him to do almost anything.

"Sunstreaker!" he shouted. Hadn't seen the mech for millennia. Had he been here all along?

... well, at this point, who cared.

The fierce beautiful yellow face snapped around to him, accompanied by a rifle's business end.

But Barricade was kneeling, and his hands were up. Even Sunstreaker wouldn't shoot a surrendering Decepticon.

Or so Barricade hoped.

"Call Ratchet," he said. He noted with relief that even the programming couldn't get him to tack a "please" onto that.

Sunstreaker's optics shuttered once in disbelief. "Why? You bleeding out? And who the hell are you, Decepticon?"

"No," Barricade said tiredly, "it's more complicated than that. Designation Barricade."

Barricade remained very still while Sunstreaker commed Ratchet, and then he told Sunstreaker what he was going to do so that he wouldn't get shot in the doing.

The last of his actions were lying down, spreading out his arms, and waiting for the delicate touches that fulfilled him.

The world began to go away, taking his pain with it. Barricade found the peace in the center of his tiredness, and his optics closed.

* * *

><p>Three joor later, Optimus Prime held an emergency meeting of senior staff. Sunstreaker was also in attendance.<p>

Sunstreaker's arrival had been accompanied by a dizzying information dump. First, he found the conflict with the Decepticons at an indefinite pause, if not an end; second, neither Jazz nor Ironhide had survived; third, there were two Primes on Earth and Sam Witwicky, _who never set pede on Cybertron_ among his other shortcomings, was the spare; fourth, Sentinel Prime had shown himself a traitor. Sunstreaker blinked, and absorbed it all, along with the English language. Then his twin said he'd been promoted to be Optimus Prime's bodyguard, Optimus confirmed that, and Sunstreaker promptly crashed.

He did not consider himself lucky that Ratchet had been on hand to reboot him. He spent the next several orn, as they all had, physically coping with the aftermath of Chicago: cleaning up a battlefield. This was only his ninth rotation-period on the _Ark_.

Prowl came in and shut the door behind him. Optimus, Sideswipe silent and watchful beside him, said, "We have been given the means with which to re-establish our race."

A murmur broke out. Optimus raised his voice, and the murmur died: "It's quite a story. Sunny, your report, please."

"At 27:55:98 this orn I was on guard duty at the entrance to the _Ark_. I was hailed by a Cybertronian individual in root mode wearing Decepticon insignia, who had placed a bucket and a wrapped parcel on the ground in front of him. He identified himself as Barricade. He was in the surrender posture, and requested that I comm Ratchet, which I did. He then told me that he was going to pop his ulnar plates and use a small laser scalpel on himself. He opened the energon lines in his arms, and lay down. The bucket proved to contain fourteen Cybertronian hatchlings, which fed from Barricades' energon lines. Barricade appeared to lose consciousness when they began to feed. On Ratchet's arrival, I returned to my post."

"Thank you. Ratchet?"

The medic ran a weary hand over his faceplates. "Currently, I have in the med bay fourteen live and healthy Cybertronian hatchlings roughly two weeks old, and one adult Cybertronian, badly damaged, who almost starved himself to death to keep them that way. He did not regain consciousness to identify himself to me before I put him fully offline to carry out some medical procedures, but his paint is consistent with that of the Decepticon we know as Barricade. He has been subjected to a recent code override, almost from the base-code up. His personality was left intact" - Ratchet's glance ricocheted off Prowl - "but if this is Barricade, his interrogation programs were overwritten by hatchling and sparkling protocols, elegant and thorough ones at that. That makes him the only mech among us with the programming necessary to raise healthy sparklings; Wheeljack, Perceptor, and I dumped those protocols after the Aerialbots reached their adult-frame upgrades." The medic paused, and Silverbolt ducked his head: _Primus_, thought Ratchet, _the kid's easily embarrassed_. "The packet proved to contain two dead hatchlings and a data chip. Once Barricade, which I will call him until I learn he has another designation, is awake and can be asked permission, I'll conduct a post-mortem. I do not believe that he is in any way responsible for those deaths: there are no marks of any kind on the bodies, and in addition the hatchling protocols he has been following would have crashed him had he attempted to harm any of his charges."

"Will Barricade recover from his injuries?"

"Yes. His survival is not in doubt unless he experiences a cascade failure, but I have no reason to expect one - the worst of the damage is to his left knee. That won't be the only reason that he'll be in med bay a while, though."

"Simple malnutrition?" Optimus asked, one optic ridge raised.

"Not simple, no. Hatchlings require nutrients in proportions which vary from those of adult Cybertronians, so he is very low in some nutrients and almost at poisoning level on others. I'm replacing the missing nutrients in Barricade's systems as fast as possible using concentrated IVs, as he was stripped of them, and of calories, by the hatchlings' line-feeding. However, that was the only way for him to keep them alive." Ratchet paused. "The overdose nutrients are being chelated out of his system, an extraordinarily painful process. As I said, he's offline, and will remain so until chelation is complete; it requires roughly forty-two joor.

"Also, his injuries are going to be difficult to repair. His frame-type is common, but over the vorn the 'cons delayed maintenance and performed shoddy repairs. That caught up to him on the trip here. If he got stuck in his alt-mode, the humans would describe him as a 'beater.' It would actually be easier and less time- and resource-consuming for us, as well as less painful for him, to reformat him."

Optimus said, "Can he be kept comfortable for a time? If he chooses to leave us once he can, I am reluctant to allocate those resources to him."

"For a time," Ratchet said. Everyone on the staff could tell he didn't like the idea, but he was, they all had to be, practical.

"Hatchlings require parents," Optimus continued. "Whose offspring are they?"

Ratchet sighed. "I can do mechano-nucleic acid analysis, but that takes a couple of decaorn, and I want to make sure the hatchlings themselves are stable before I take any samples from them. It'll be at least three decaorn before I can give you a definitive answer to that question."

Sam Witwicky spoke up. "And if one or more of them is Megatron's?"

Ratchet said, "Red, would you pull that recording up for us, please? This was in the packet with the two dead hatchlings."

Red Alert obliged.

Starscream's image glowered down at them. The screechy voice said, "These hatchlings are the last attempt I can make to ensure that my race survives. Most are the offspring of one Autobot and one Decepticon; Megatron is not represented among the genitors. A few have two Autobot genitors. I chose mecha with good physical health, and average or above-average intelligence." The beautiful, balueful, arrogant face stared at them for a moment, and the recording ended abruptly.

Red Alert said, "The data chip, by the way, also contains complete instructions for gathering genetic material from discarded armor and the dead, combining it, and nurturing the embryo in vitro."

"That's wonderful news," said the Prime, "along with the fact that Starscream used the largest gene pool possible to create these hatchlings."

Prowl said, "I wonder if he was telling the truth about their ancestry?"

Ratchet said, "Let me get the hatchlings and Barricade stable. Once that's established, I can do the MNA analysis, and then we'll _know_."

Optimus said. "Very well. Our two highest priorities right now are the welfare of our guests, and the continued monitoring of communications channels. Ratchet, the entire crew is at your disposal."

Ratchet said, "I'd like every one of us to spend one-quarter of one shift each decaorn with the hatchlings, with more sessions to be assigned if it's enjoyable for both parties. We can't all upload the programming, but we can all socialize them. Out of that experience, some hatchlings will bond with an individual, and that mech will be assigned extensive mentoring duties once the hatchlings are old enough to benefit from it. That's probably at least a half-vorn in the future, unless Starscream programmed them to mature quickly."

There was a stir around the table. "Is that possible?" Prowl said.

"Very much so. Don't forget that Starscream was an expert in neuroscience. If he wrote such a program it will have only the effect he designed it to, so that the hatchlings won't be made sick or unstable because of it. I'm fairly certain he wrote the upgrades to Barricade's programming, and those are almost beyond expert. Scary good."

"How did he get Barricade to agree to the upgrades?" Optimus asked.

Ratchet hesitated. "Barricade had some minor half-healed injuries consistent with a scuffle with a larger mech, and some paint transfer in Starscream's colors, so he might have been overpowered. But I'll have to let him wake up to be sure."

"All right," Optimus said. "Do you have anything else to tell us?"

"Not at this point."

"This meeting was called to deal with this issue. Anything else we should know about?" The Prime's calm gaze swept the room, but no one answered. "All right. The presence of the hatchlings is not to shared with anyone except our personnel, and among the humans, only NEST personnel. Dismissed."

* * *

><p>"Expected you," said Ratchet, and finished feeding the last hatchling. He put it down onto Barricade's berth, where it cheeped twice, burped once, and burrowed under the thermal-regulation blanket covering the unconscious Decepticon.<p>

Optimus smiled. "I wanted to see them. It'll be three decaorn, a full lunar cycle, before I can get free of the Pit-spawned mess Chicago made of our relations with Earth's governments."

"Yeah, I thought that might be the case." Ratchet finished the documentation, and turned to the berth Barricade presently lay unconscious on.

"He doesn't look very comfortable," Optimus observed.

Cybertronians recharge flat on their backs for preference, but Barricade lay on his side under a thermal-regulation blanket, another folded to pillow his head and keep the spinal strut straight. "It's the code override," Ratchet explained. "The posture provides the greatest number of nooks and crannies for the hatchlings to snuggle into."

"Ah."

"Here," said the medic, handing the startled Prime two of the hatchlings. "Help me get them into recharge."

"And ... how do you do that?" said Optimus, exchanging optics - Optimus' weren't nearly so beady as the hatchlings' - with two handfuls of soft plating.

"Put them up to your neck, like this," said Ratchet, and cuddled his two into the join between neck and shoulder. Then he began rocking back and forth. "Samuel Prime has suggested that we copy a human device called a 'rocking chair.' Apparently human sparklings derive comfort and pleasure from this motion, and ours seem to as well."

"I'll assign Grapple and Hoist to it." Prime began to rock, feeling rather silly. Then, suddenly, calmer and happier than he had since Chicago.

Ratchet stifled the impulse to broadcast the image of the Prime with that little smile on his face, and his hands (and collar struts) full of hatchlings. "This is what we should be doing," he said to Optimus. "This is what _you_ should be doing."

"Yes. We have been given an enormous gift; I had accepted that we were very likely the last generation of Cybertronians, with a gene pool too small to sustain ourselves. Now we have hope for our species' survival."

Ratchet's babies had gone into recharge. He put them into the crib he had designed; they were used to recharging in a pile with one another, and he saw no reason to change that just yet. He grubbed two more out of Barricade's blanket.

"How do you tell when they're in recharge?" Optimus said.

Ratchet smiled. "They relax all over. They feel like they get heavier."

"I thought you'd said you'd dumped those protocols." Optimus, successful on his first try, babied up again.

"Not a protocol, a memory. And a happy one at that."

"Ah." Optimus' first finds had already been in recharge; he transferred them, picked up two more. "I've decided that, for the time being, our little friends will continue to remain our secret. Samuel Prime tells me this is the best strategy, at least until our hosts pull their heads out of their afts."

Ratchet snorted. "Send Sunny to do the negotiation with the intransigent ones."

"You have no idea how sorely I am tempted."

Ratchet let Optimus put the last two pairs down, which took seconds for each pair; they were already quite drowsy. Ratchet simply watched the Prime, fondly, as he cuddled and rocked hatchlings.

Then the warmer binged, and Ratchet took a thermal-reg blanket out of it, filched Barricade's, and spread the warmed one over him. The blanket the Decepticon had been sleeping under went floating down gently over the hatchlings.

Optimus cocked an optic ridge, slid the last two under it.

"It smells of Barricade, and retains a little of his EM field," Ratchet explained. "It's really best to change as few things as possible all at once for them."

"Kind of you, Ratchet."

"Yeah, well, don't tell anybody, it'll wreck my reputation. Come and have a cube with me, and we'll call it an orn."


	2. Chapter 2

Fireflight appeared to have found his soulmate. "Aaaand - ups-a-daisy!"

The daisy, a tiny green mech, upsed about six inches above Fireflight's outstretched palm, and then came down. Fireflight matched the daisy's velocity of descent, lowering his hand on impact to give a pillow-soft landing.

The hatchling stuck one entire servo into his mouth, and giggled. Fireflight giggled back, and stroked one finger over the tiny helm.

Ratchet, whose pumpbeat and respiration rate had skyrocketed when the little one got airborne, settled back into his chair. He _would_ stop being overprotective.

He _would_. He just didn't know when, yet.

It was interesting, though, that among the five Aerialbots, three had found a hatchling to relate to. Slingshot, the bookworm among them, had opened a datapad he'd brought with him, and sat down on the floor. All fourteen hatchlings had swarmed him, sure of their welcome: apparently Barricade had taught them that sitting on the floor was their "All Aboard!" call, and board they did. Eagerly.

Even though the datapad was meant for young readers, it was still a tome of military history. Slingshot had only one hatchling remaining in his lap, tiny optic ridges furrowed and minute lip-plates pouted, trying to follow a discussion of an early war in Cybertron's history as Slingshot read aloud to it.

Silverbolt laughed, though not at Slingshot. He was circling the med bay, one servo up at optic level, with a silver-and-blue hatchling belly-down on it with his tiny new wings outstretched, flexing them to feel out the minute shifts in air circulation within the med bay. Silverbolt's grin was about to take the top of his helm off, not a sight one saw very often.

Ratchet was glad this had worked out for the Aerialbot's grave young leader. The gestalt had been thrown helm-first into this war when they were far too young for it, and Silverbolt as commander bore the brunt of that. If playing airplane with a hatchling gave him some of his stolen sparklinghood back, that was the best news Ratchet had all day.

The other two Aerialbots had been willing, but were ill-suited for hatchling socialization. Once was enough for everyone involved.

Skyfire, their other flyer, had begged off until the hatchlings were older after his first meeting with them. They'd taken one look at the size of the shuttle and bolted for Barricade's lap.

That was where the shyest one was now, along with the odd brother; the rest were trundling about the bay, exploring it. The shy one didn't often come out, but seemed to be looking for someone. He had greeted Sideswipe politely when the Prime's bodyguard showed up for his first shift with them, where all the others _ran_ toward Sideswipe, apparently sensing a kindred spirit; but the yellow hatchling marked with red and blue, most reserved of them all, visited him only briefly. Since then, he gave each newcomer to med bay a swift, intense scrutiny, and immediately returned to whatever he had been doing. Mostly, that was watching everything, _everything_, that happened in the bay with that same unnerving intensity.

Now Sideswipe's appeal for the hatchlings, Ratchet thought, was going to be interesting. Sideswipe was a natural at parenting, and who would have thought it? And what would his twin do about it?

The alarm went off, forestalling these thoughts. "Time, Barricade," Ratchet said.

Barricade made no protest; nor did the hatchlings when removed from his lap, curling up under their therm-reg blanket in the crib.

Fireflight gave the former Decepticon a servo to stand up, and helped him back onto the berth, all with the other servo around the daisy, now perched on his shoulder. "Thanks," Barricade said briefly.

Ratchet fastened up the IVs again. "Good news is, we won't have to do this beyond tomorrow."

"That is good news," Barricade said. "Look ... will I get put into the brig? I don't want to be separated from the 'lings, but I don't think that would be a good environment for them."

_And your new programming won't let you rest if you're apart from them, either,_ Ratchet thought. Aloud, he said, "That's what we're going to be addressing at the staff meeting I'm about to go to, where I will put up a considerable scrap to keep you here. First Aid will be by, so you won't be alone."

Barricade yawned. "Sorry. I get so tired ..."

"To be expected." _Especially with the sedative I put in that IV._ "Sleep well; see you later."

* * *

><p>"Barricade raises a valid point," Ratchet said mildly, after Red Alert had run himself out of reasons why they should put Barricade in the brig, and the hatchlings with him if necessary. "That environment will stunt the hatchlings' intellectual growth. They're also so small that they can run between the bars."<p>

Red Alert's face contracted, and Ratchet had his "Alarming Red Alert" point for the day. However, he had a few other things for Red to think about, because he wanted this to go right for the hatchlings. "And, at this point, who could Barricade contact, how could he contact them since I locked every single one of his comm frequencies down, and what could they do if he did? He was fully disarmed, and his transformation cog removed, on surrender. He's in such poor physical shape that he can't escape quickly - he has quite a painful limp, among his other problems."

Ratchet paused for breath, but no one on the senior staff was so foolhardy as to interrupt a Ratchet-rant in full spate, not even Sideswipe. "Also, I saw what living off the humans' fuel since Chicago did to him. His filters concentrated their additives and other poisons, since the hatchlings were taking filtered energon from him. He won't be back to normal for almost a vorn, and during that vorn, he will need energon, not gasoline, to regain his health."

The Prime spoke when it became clear that Ratchet had fully vented his word-tanks. "Did that concentration of additives poison the hatchlings?"

"No. Starscream calculated things very well. Barricade had another three to seven orn of safe line-feeding before the buildup began to circulate throughout his system."

"Fortunate."

"Smart," said Ratchet, not quite correcting his Prime. "That slagger was very smart." His word-tanks had refilled themselves, and he continued, "If all of that weren't enough to keep him here, Barricade's new programming ensures that he'd have to take the hatchlings with him. All but four of them have now bonded to an Autobot, which means that he would also want to leave the bonded ones here. I found that the programming conflict between those needs has a written expression that would keep Barricade running in literal circles at the entrance to the Ark, with his hands full of hatchlings."

"I didn't even know that was possible," said Grapple, who one way and another had a lot of experience crunching code.

"I'll forward the code to anyone who's interested. It's quite concise and elegant," Ratchet said. "In that moment, I really admired Starscream as a programmer. No, Barricade's out of options to staying put, and I've made sure he knows that." The medic paused. "He's off the IVs as of tomorrow. He's beginning to have longer periods of being awake. After the hatchlings are recharging tonight, I'm going to have a little chat with him on how all this came about."

"For the time being, Barricade will stay in the med bay. Down the road, we'll have to look into quarters for him that can accommodate the hatchlings as well. – Has he shown any hostility?" Optimus said, hands folded in front of himself.

"He really hasn't been conscious long enough to. And he's so totally focused on the hatchlings' well-being at this point that he isn't likely to have energy for anything else until his programming settles into its next phase. The hatchlings themselves will trigger that as they mature; I expect it within the next two lunar cycles."

"And how are they doing?" said Prowl.

Prowl was beginning to worry Ratchet. He'd had three sessions with the hatchlings, and while he was patient, kind, and seemed to be quite amused by them, none had bonded to him. This didn't stop him from asking for more sessions.

"They are all maturing within normal ranges for their frame types, not at the same rate, but growing individually just as they should. They'll all grow up to be fine mecha."

"There are no femmes among them?"

"Won't know for a while yet without invasive exams. I'd prefer they didn't learn to fear me just yet."

"Good call," said Optimus. "Too late for the rest of us, though."

Ratchet gave every grin at the table a sour look. "Yeah, hee hee. Very funny."

Prowl, wiping that expression off his face, said, "You said four of the hatchlings have not bonded to a particular Autobot?"

"Four, yes."

"Have all the mecha spent time with them?"

"Sunstreaker's first appointment is today. He's the holdout, him and Skyfire, who asked to do it later - Skyfire's so big he scares them." Ratchet grinned. "They are remarkably forgiving little mechs, but even so, not one of them will sit on Gears."

Grins all around.

"I will be there for my own shift as soon as I get the political nonsense resolved," Optimus said, un-grinning.

"Nonsense is right," said Sam Witwicky, running a hand down a face too young to be that tired.

"You will, of course," Optimus said smoothly to Ratchet, "keep us all apprised of any ... humorous developments in Sunstreaker's interaction with the sparklings?"

"You can bet your collective afts," the senior medic said formally.


	3. Chapter 3

"All right, I'm here," said Sunstreaker, standing just inside the med bay doors with his arms folded across his chest. "Now what?"

Ratchet smiled. (Abandon hope, all ye who enter.) "Now," he said, "you come and sit down right _there_." Ratchet's forefinger indicated a place next to Barricade on the floor of the med bay.

Sunstreaker sat, nodding once, curtly, to Barricade.

Ratchet went to the crib, and picked it up gently. The hatchlings were large enough now to crawl out of it, and so a lid had been added; he set the crib halfway between Sunstreaker and Barricade, and removed it.

The hatchlings went up and over the side in a river of tiny mecha, surrounding Barricade, crawling up his armor to sit in his lap, the crook of his elbow, the notch of his throat, the juncture of neck to shoulder, humming and trilling and cheeping and purring.

All but one.

The little red-blue-and-yellow mech was still asleep under the blanket, but stirred once his brothers left him. He blinked twice, sat up, yawned, and stretched.

Then he saw Sunstreaker, and _screamed_, maw wide open. He scrambled over the edge of the crib, all baby-clumsiness and frantic speed, and made arrow-straight for the yellow 'bot, yelling his little head off.

They weren't quite the same color, Ratchet noted. Sunstreaker was a brighter yellow. Which turned out to be appropriate.

The psychopathic twin shot like a rocket, up and away!, for the door, which Ratchet neatly locked just in time. Sunstreaker yanked at it fruitlessly, and turned at bay.

The little yellow hatchling waddled straight for him at top speed, tiny body rocking from side to side with the haste of his gait, arms held straight out from his sides. When the little mech stopped in front of him, Sunstreaker curled up and away, one foot off the floor, his arms flexed to shield himself, the first step in the Dance of Revulsion, and cried, "Get it away, get it away!"

The little mech stared straight at him, stood up as tall as he could - maybe to the level of Sunstreaker's ankle - and replied, "Screeeee!" at the top of his wee voice, stretching out his arms for emphasis. He worked so hard at making this communication that his little wings popped out for the first time.

Ratchet and First Aid were both doubled over with laughter at this point. Barricade had fallen flat on his back and was heaving for breath, surrounded by deposed and squawking hatchlings; he was pointing at Sunstreaker, as were all four security cams in the med bay.

Ratchet, holding on to one edge of a berth with the other hand on his knee, gasped, "He wants you to pick him up, idiot! Put your hand down on the floor - hee - and he'll climb onto your palm."

"He'll scuff my finish!"

Ratchet stopped laughing so fast he nearly hurt himself. "Sunstreaker, believe me, if you don't give that little mech what he needs, because for some Primus-forsaken reason he's decided he's going to bond to you, I will give you a finish you never need to look after again!"

Sunstreaker paled. "You wouldn't dare."

The hatchling restated his demand, at higher volume.

"You watch my dust." Ratchet showed a large number of dentae in The Smile Carefully Practiced in Front of a Reflective Surface to Induce Fear in Others. "Or should I say, 'rust'? I'll give you a choice: the six-month layer of oxidation from a tropical jungle, or a twenty-year layer, with sun-fading, from a high desert."

The hatchling restated his demand, with added arm-flap, at even higher volume.

Sunstreaker gave Ratchet the same look Mary's little lamb gave Mary when she invited it to dinner while uncapping a jar of mint jelly. With a grimace, he carefully knelt and extended one servo, placing it on the floor of the med bay, and the littlest one hopped its own height up to his palm, and then chirruped impatiently at him.

"What does it want?"

Barricade said quietly, "Put _him_, not it, up to the joint between your shoulder and your neck."

Sunstreaker flashed Barricade a "You and what army, Decepticon?" look, but did as he was bidden. The small one burrowed its head and neck under his chin, curled up, and gave a contented little whicker.

"Keep your servo around him so he doesn't fall, and then go read a datapad," Barricade said, fighting back the giggles. This was the feared Yellow Death, whose presence on any battlefield in Cybertron was an omen of losses to come? He stifled himself, as Ratchet was again in the throes of laughter, snorting and snuffling, and First Aid was equally beyond speech.

"A ... datapad? You mean read it to him?"

"No, you don't have to do anything with him yet. Just be with him, touching him. Right now, at this stage of his life, that's all he needs."

Sunstreaker, looking badly confused but still tougher than Barricade (who to be fair didn't know there was a contest), unsubspaced a datapad, and sat in the adapted-from-humans rocking chair a still-giggling Ratchet imperiously pointed to.

After a time, timidly at first, he rocked. Once.

The hatchling gave a subdued trill, and cuddled in closer.

Sunstreaker rocked again. The hatchling nestled closer still, and began the soft continuous trilling that Ratchet thought of as a purr.

Sunstreaker got with the program, and began a gentle rocking motion.

The next time Ratchet looked over, maybe fifteen breem later, the yellow frontliner was sound asleep. The datapad had fallen to his lap, one elbow was propped on the arm of the chair, arm propped to keep the tiny mechling cuddled close to his neck. Held securely in Sunstreaker's servo, he looked out with what Ratchet would have sworn was a gleam of malevolent triumph in those beady little optics.

* * *

><p>Ratchet was reading the day's notes, and about ready to call it an orn, when Barricade knocked at his office door.<p>

"Ah, Barricade, come on in." Ratchet blanked his monitor, and pulled open That desk drawer. Two cubes and a bottle of two-million-year-old distillate appeared; Ratchet raised one cube in inquiry as Barricade limped up to sit in his visitor's chair.

"Thanks," said Barricade, "but I don't really feel good enough to. And if one of them wakes up ..."

Both of the medic's optic ridges went up, and he put the booze away. "Look," Ratchet said kindly, "I can rewrite the protocols a bit, to be looser. Starscream set you up to do what you had to do for a short period of time. That dangerous stretch is over now, and a looser protocol would actually be more beneficial to the 'lings." He paused. "And really, Barricade, you're among friends."

"No," said Barricade. "I'm not." He rubbed the insignia on his chest.

_Still a tough guy_, Ratchet thought. Aloud, he said, "You'll find out over time that you are. Think about having those protocols loosened. You should know by now I wouldn't do anything that would hurt the 'lings, and you can actually have a life that doesn't revolve totally around them."

"Well," said Barricade, rather flatly, "a life is exactly what I don't have, isn't it? I wasn't of legal age when I joined the faction, but my city had been bombed so early, so thoroughly, that no records existed anywhere of my birth. I bought mods with the money I'd been saving for my education, and Megatron took me on because he needed an interrogator, where the Autobots didn't want one. The 'cons are all I've ever known, until Starscream ..."

Ratchet nodded. "Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that. When you came in, you had some scratches and dents I'd say were made by losing a scuffle to a larger mech, one about Starscream's size, and some paint rub in Starscream's colors as a result of said scuffle. That accurate?"

"Yes." Barricade sighed. "Give me five breem."

Ratchet did, knowing that pride dies a slow death for the tough guys.

Barricade sighed again four breem and thirty-nine kliks later. "Seventeen orn ago," he said, "I woke up in my own berth just in time to see Starscream shut the door to my quarters as he was leaving. We had never been friends or lovers, and I had not given him the codes.

"Starting maybe ten breem later, I had eight joor of agonizing pain, for which Hook said he could find no cause. But he didn't spend a lot of time looking, just doped me until I could be awake again without screaming. After that the pain subsided as fast as it came on.

"The day after that I was confined to quarters. I was dizzy occasionally, but ... otherwise okay. The day after _that_, I stood my regular shift on monitor duty. It was hard, though. I couldn't concentrate. All that information about where you were and what you were doing and what the humans were doing and saying? Just ... noise. I didn't care any more."

"All that's consistent," Ratchet said, "with having an incompatible protocol overwrite your upgrades." The expression on his faceplates hardened. "And Hook's behavior is consistent with knowing what was going on."

"Yeah. Figured Hooky out on my own. And you don't get much more incompatible than 'interrogator' and 'hatchling.'"

"Well, maybe 'Sunstreaker' and 'hatchling.'"

"You mecha have a _protocol_ for that? Primus, what a bunch of sick fraggers."

Ratchet grinned.

Barricade continued, "So anyway ... two orn before Chicago, Starscream summoned me to his august presence, wrestled me to the floor, and shoved a data chip into my ulnar port that continued the overwrite. It's a good thing his quarters are, were, soundproofed. It hurt as bad as it did the first time. When I came to about twenty breem later, he gave me a bucket of hatchlings, some feeder bottles, fifty gallons of purified energon, a bunch of other stuff the 'lings needed, and orders to take them to a set of coordinates. He also gave me a route to follow which was ... roundabout. And after Chicago, avoiding checkpoints was complicated. Took me twelve days instead of three to get here.

"The day after the battle, the codes finished the overwrite, and the day after that I ran out of energon for them and started line-feeding."

"Prowl will probably want to know more about your trip here. I've been asked to forward a recording of this conversation to him."

"I'll tell him everything I can remember. Pit, I'll hack _myself_ so he can download it. It doesn't matter any more."

Ratchet nodded, not enlightening Barricade that said hacking had already occurred. "No, it doesn't, not any more. How did you keep the hatchlings occupied?"

"They slept a lot at first. Still, I'll bet I've got the most-trashed alt-mode interior of any mech here. And Las Vegas, with all the lights? They looooved Las Vegas. I parked once underneath a flashing sign that revolved, and they watched it for _hours_."

"Las Vegas? That's pretty much out of the way between Chicago and Oregon."

"Told you it was roundabout. Starscream said if things went badly for the 'cons, which he expected, I was safest going the way he'd mapped out. I was just inside Missouri when the first news of Chicago came through."

"Eighty on the interstate?"

"Two hundred twenty late at night. There was a lockdown after midnight for humans."

Ah. That was why the trip had left him in such bad shape: living off gasoline and doing 220 for six hours a night for almost two weeks would do that to any mech. And if all that weren't bad enough, Barricade was line-feeding on top of it. All he said, though, was, "Don't tell Sideswipe that. He'll want to beat it. – When did the two little guys die?"

"First day out. I couldn't get those two to take energon. One died eight hours out, one fourteen."

"How old were they at that point?"

"Between three and four days, according to Starscream."

"Hm," said Ratchet. He'd already put some thought into probable cause of death, and the timeline fit. "I'd like to do an autopsy on them."

"I thought you already had."

"You don't object, I take it?"

"Would I have legal standing if I did? I don't, by the way. I grieved for them, but ... I need to know too."

"Let's not even ask the legal-standing question," Ratchet said. "It takes lawyers to answer it, and those are humans who frighten even Optimus Prime."


	4. Chapter 4

For the second time since the silver 'bot had been promoted, Optimus Prime saw Sideswipe smile. The first had been on meeting again the twin he thought lost.

Now, though, the security camera footage from med bay had just faded out on an image of Sunstreaker cootchy-cooing "his" hatchling.

Or more accurately, the hatchling which now held full title to Sunstreaker, frame, spark, and processor.

Prowl wiped his optics, as did Red Alert, Wheeljack, Silverbolt, and Perceptor; they still had wide grins on their faceplates. Sunny's Dance of Revulsion, Hatchling Version (Commentary by Hatchling), was quite possibly going to be #1 permanently on the collective jukebox, narrowly beating out his own Nap in Rocking Chair with Hatchling Triumphant.

Ratchet was grinning too. "He's been back to med bay three times since, for every feeding when he isn't on duty, and he stays long enough to spend some time with the hatchling. He's even spent a little time with the others."

"So that leaves only Skyfire?" Optimus said. "And me."

"Yeah. There's a bit of a problem with Skyfire. If I have him come sit in the med bay, I literally have no space to work on patients. The hatchlings aren't really big enough yet to go outside med bay."

Grapple said, "There's a very large storage space right next to the bay. What if we have it fitted out as a single-berth emergency area? First Aid can treat the day's mishaps there, while Skyfire spends some time with you and the hatchlings."

Ratchet smiled. "Barricade just calls them the 'lings.' He'll say, 'C'mon, 'lings, time to eat,' and they all come streaming toward him."

Chuckles all around. But then Ratchet sobered. "It's a good idea, though maybe First Aid and I will split that duty - I want him to have some time with the 'lings too. If you'll get the area cleaned out, I'll get the specs to Grapple and Hoist. – And I have the results of the MNA analyses."

"Ah," said Optimus. "Sideswipe, if you please?"

"Yes, sir," said Sideswipe, and left the room.

Ratchet put up a list of pairs of names. No hatchling descriptions were attached.

Starscream, whatever his other proclivities, had spoken truth about one thing: Megatron's name was absent.

Every fully-flighted mech in either faction, though, was represented at least once. Starscream, after all, had been a flier.

Prowl knit his brows. "I assume you have a reason for not showing us the parentage directly?"

"Yeah, I've archived that information, along with the memory of reading it, and Red did the same at my request. We can't access it without a lot of deliberate effort. I've done that because, if all of us knew each hatchling's parentage, it's inevitable that we would come to our interactions with them with expectations of their behavior based on their ancestry. That would make it quite difficult for them to be themselves. There would be a disproportionate reward in our reactions for behavior that confirmed our expectations of their ancestry, and a lack of reward for contravening our expectations."

They absorbed that quietly for a few moments.

"Do we have any idea why Starscream chose these particular mecha?" Optimus asked. "Fliers, including Seekers, seem somewhat ... over-represented."

"Spark compatibility, most likely," Ratchet said. "And if you're thinking in two more generations, we'll all be Seekers, I wouldn't worry about that. Seeker genes are recessive, so both parents have to have a Seeker gene to pass on for the match to produce a Seeker. Even then, each offspring of two Seekers has only a one-in-four chance of being a Seeker, though any offspring of two fliers has a three-in-four chance of being a flyer. If one genitor is flighted and one's a grounder, one hatchling in four will be flighted, two will carry the gene for it, and the last will be a grounder and the genitor of grounders. If one's a Seeker and one's a grounder, the offspring will be Seekers only if the grounder had Seeker genes somewhere in the background. I'd say one or two of our little flighted mecha - I thought there were three, but yesterday another popped wings - are probably Seekers."

* * *

><p>Flighted hatchling number four had decided on second acquaintance that Skyfire was hers (the gender of that pronoun a fact as yet unknown to any but herself). The shuttle's knee was at just the right height for her to scale and glide from, although she disdained other forms of interaction.<p>

That was about to change. She paused atop his knee armor, turned toward Skyfire, spread her wings, and squawked.

"Really?" he said in surprise, lowering his datapad. "Well, okay." He put his very large servo down for her to step onto, which she did; he raised her to eye level, and said, "Now what is it that you would like?"

She spread her wings and squawked.

He offered her his collarbone.

She spread her wings and squawked.

He stroked her tiny helm.

She spread her wings and squawked.

He bounced her on his palm.

She spread her wings and squawked.

"Here," said Barricade, giving Skyfire a bottle, "it's lunchtime. Probably, he's hungry."

Skyfire took a moment to appreciate that when he was handing around bottles, at least, Barricade no longer frightened him. He watched the hatchlings' guardian weave a complex web of delivery while the Seekerlet flopped onto her back on his servo, and dealt enthusiastically with her own received goods.

Silverbolt, bearing his own hatchling, came to sit beside him. "Hey," he said.

"Oh, hi," Skyfire said, glancing at him, then back to the project at servo. "How are you? Haven't seen you since ..."

"The big battle, yeah. Been okay. You?"

"Fine." The shuttle, a shy mech at heart, smiled at him. "I see you've been adopted too."

"Yeah." Silverbolt, as usual, hid his own shyness, and grinned down at the small blue-and-silver person in the crook of his elbow, who was also making short work of a bottle of energon. "You heard about Sunny, right?"

"The frontliner who screams like a human femme-sparkling when cornered by a hatchling? They showed the vid feed in the rec room. He got up and stomped out. –Was he here today?"

"No, the little one is making do with Barricade. Or maybe Ratchet, I don't know which."

"Ah. I hear that two more of your gestalt have mentoring abilities, as well."

"Fireflight and Slingshot, yeah. Kinda surprised me too."

"Are they all fliers?"

"No, Fireflight's is a ground model. He doesn't care. He thinks the little mech is utter perfection."

"Ratchet was surprised when this little one sprouted wings," Skyfire said, nodding toward her.

"Oh, this one's the fourth? Ratchet said in a meeting the other day that there was another one. Good deal." The jet shifted. "Look, when they're a bit older, let's go flying together with them, shall we?"

"How about a walk first?" Skyfire's owner, bottle emptied, had gone to sleep. He placed her gently over his shoulder and revved a few times to burp her.

"Sure. When they're bigger."

"Or we could just, you know, go for a walk or a flight by ourselves," said Skyfire, surprising himself considerably.

"Yeah, we could," said Silverbolt, surprising his own self considerably. "I'd like that."

* * *

><p>Trailbreaker brought Gears, who had managed (yet again) to fall from a cliff, into the med bay.<p>

"I don't need to see Ratchet!" Gears shouted, struggling in Trailbreaker's arms. He caught sight of Barricade, gathering up the hatchlings, and snarled, "Especially not with that _'con_ and his creepy little spawn here!"

Ratchet snatched him up by the collar fairing and said, "_I_ will decide whether you need treatment, not you! And you will _sit_ on this berth" - Ratchet placed him gently, Trailbreaker thought, considering the anger that was roiling off the medic, on the berth - and snarled, "where you will _stay_ until I decide to treat you! Because if I had to do it right _now_, I'd part you out, and stasis-lock your processor!"

Every faceplate in med bay, except for a few of the hatchlings', was open-mouthed.

Gears shut his first, and whined, "But my leg hurts!"

"Good! Let it be a reminder to you that in med bay, you are required to be _polite_ to _anyone_ else who is here!"

Ratchet stamped off, muttering, "_Spawn_! I'll show him who's _spawn_!" under his breath.

Barricade smirked at Sunstreaker, sitting beside him to feed hatchlings, then dropped his head to hide the expression as Ratchet glared at both of them, then slammed the door into his office.

It was seventeen point four six breem later when Gears muttered something under his breath.

"What?" said Sunstreaker.

"I said, 'I'm sorry.'" Gears was looking down at the floor.

"We knew that already," Sunstreaker said.

Gears glared at him. Sunstreaker shrugged. "It isn't news that you're a jerk, Gears."

Gears snapped, "I was talking to the 'con!"

"His designation is Barricade! Use it!" Sunstreaker snapped right back.

A poisonous silence reigned in med bay for another three breem, while the hatchlings mobbed Barricade and cheeped, needing reassurance in the face of the flaring anger in the adults' EM fields.

And also, possibly, remembering that Gears was a mech on whom not one of them would sit. Ever. They got up on, then immediately down from, him, and shunned him thereafter. Hatchlings 14, Gears 0.

Gears cleared his throat. "Barricade, I'm sorry I said that about the hatchlings."

"Thank you," Barricade said politely. "I'm sure they appreciate that." The tone of his voice would have adequately chilled a room-temperature martini in three or four kliks.

Gears said miserably, "And I'm sorry I insulted you about being a 'con."

"I'm not a 'con anymore," Barricade said. "Or if I am, I'm just about the only one left. I'm lamed, I'm sick, I'm the parent of fourteen hatchlings, none of whom, so far as I know, are my own. I'm not a threat, Gears, until you make me into one."

Sunstreaker commed Ratchet: _You can come out now, they kissed and made up._

Ratchet bustled (Barricade wondered sometimes if that was his only gait) past them, saying, "Thanks for the heads-up, Sunny," on the way by.

Barricade said, "You commed him? Didn't know you had that much mercy under your plating."

Sunstreaker shrugged. "Me, either. Thought I burned it all up by not shooting you."

* * *

><p>Ratchet said to Prowl one day after the senior staff meeting, "Got five kliks?"<p>

"For you, even ten," Prowl said, and led the way to his office.

Unlike Ratchet's cubby, there were not datapads on every available surface, nor anatomical and program-tree charts on the wall. However, it did share with the medic's office the characteristic of having That drawer.

Prowl made use of it.

"Holy crap," Ratchet observed.

"Might be holy. Isn't crap," said Prowl, pouring out the second glass.

"I have _never_ known you to drink on duty."

"The war," said Prowl, "is officially over. Well, not officially; we still have some 'cons unaccounted for. But it's safe enough. And if it turns out not to be, I'll put myself on report. There. Satisfied?"

"You have such good solutions to all our problems," Ratchet said, and made inroads on his drink.

"Not all of them."

"Well, no, and there's one I've come to speak to you about, confidentially."

Prowl's servos did something to the underside of his desk. "Go on."

"According to our records, Barricade is your brother, but he seems to have no knowledge of that."

Prowl sighed, and refilled their drinks. "No. He doesn't."

"Is it something I need to know about?"

"I don't know." The Praxian stared down at his desktop. "At his sparking, he was immediately sent to foster care in another, smaller city. I don't know why; I'm only two vorn older than he is. The foster parents were instructed to allow him to believe that they were his family. He seemed happy there the few times I was allowed to visit as a family friend, so I think they were kind to him. He wasn't yet adult when the war broke out, and I joined the faction. I lost touch after his city was bombed, could never find him. It wasn't until I was 2IC here, going over surveillance of the _Nemesis_, that I realized that Barricade was ... the name he uses now."

Ratchet sighed. "I'm sorry."

"Me too. Mostly I'm sorry that our genitors were such afts."

"Yeah. Look, he has no friends here, and the others don't trust him yet. How about stepping up to the plate?"

"Stepping up ... to a plate?"

"Human term. I've been hanging around Lennox too much. It means I want you to fill a need. I don't say you have to tell Barricade all this, though it would probably be a good idea down the line, but how about spending some time mentoring him, as well as the hatchlings?"

Prowl looked at with his mandible agape. "All right," he said finally.

"Good! You're coming to see the hatchlings tomorrow; you can start then." The medic finished his drink and rose. "Thanks for the high-grade."

"You drop this bomb and now you're leaving?"

"Oh yes. Mecha to see, lives to derail, you know how it is. I'll be in Optimus' office if you need me."

"Oh dear Primus," Prowl said, as the door slid shut behind Ratchet.

* * *

><p>Optimus poured Ratchet yet another drink.<p>

"No thanks," the medic said.

Optimus stopped dead, stared at him, then took the cube himself. "Who are you and what have you done with my CMO?" he said, and drank.

"Very funny. I had two drinks with Prowl not ten kliks ago. I don't need to reel back into med bay and breathe high-grade all over the hatchlings."

"I can't argue with you there. What's on your mind, my friend?"

Ratchet pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture he'd actually picked up from Optimus. "The two dead hatchlings were killed by spark-compatibility issues. That leaves a particular look to the spark chamber, unmistakable once you've seen it, and a particular set of chemicals in the energon stream. They were present in abundance. I've drained those bodies of fluids, and put them into storage. Spark incompatibility doesn't damage or cause dysfunction in the frame. The next time somebody here gets sparked, we'll have download frames. Or."

"Or?"

Ratchet hesitated, looked at Optimus, looked away, looked back. "We have MNA analysis of both Jazz and Ironhide on record. We have their living MNA in four of the sparklings. I could recreate their genetic material, grow the protoforms in the lab, put them in adult frames, download Ironhide's and Jazz' last backups into the new processors, and -"

Optimus stood up suddenly and went to his office window, his back to Ratchet. "No."

Ratchet hadn't expected that answer, that firmly, that fast. "May I know why not?"

"If we do what you suggest, we would be creating mecha of whom we had crippling expectations. You masked the parentage of the sparklings among us now for precisely this reason. No mech so conceived and programmed could be remotely normal." Optimus' servos clenched into fists. "And they would not, in truth, be Ironhide, or Jazz. No, we must grieve and go on. I'm truly sorry, Ratchet."

He didn't turn around. Ratchet rose, left his office, and got on with grieving.


	5. Chapter 5

The medical staff were having a meeting.

That is, Ratchet and First Aid were having a closed-office-door discussion, and the hatchling who had taken out the lease on Ratchet was peering out of the carrier the medic had crafted for him: sometimes at First Aid, sometimes around the office, but most often up to his property.

The carrier was designed to stay attached to Ratchet's chestplate, not swing into his line of vision, nor dump the hatchling into his work area. Medicine, at least for a Cybertronian medic, is a servos-on occupation.

Barricade was minding the others, with instructions to come knock if somebody showed up dripping energon. Currently, "minding" consisted of lying flat on the med bay floor, performing exercises to strengthen his leg, as thirteen sparklings climbed on him, jumped off him, decorated him with a hatchling lei, and used him as a gliding base.

In my first career, I was a Decepticon interrogator. Then I held a position as a playground ...

Ratchet said, "I have some sparkling protocols that I want you to upload." He tossed a datachip to the younger mech. "I have them too, and I don't want to be the only one around who knows what he's doing with the hatchlings. Percy and Jack have agreed to upload them as well. I really wish we had more medical training among ourselves."

"Yeah, we're spread pretty thin." First Aid inserted the chip, uploaded the data, and tossed it back. Ratchet caught it and put in a drawer. Not That drawer.

"Cheep," the smallest member of the team said.

First Aid smiled at the little one, and at the big one too. "So is that it?"

"No, far from it." Ratchet passed another datachip across. "These are the MNA analyses of all our babies, with genitors' names attached to a physical description. It's to be archived as medically-sensitive information. No access without direct need, and a double-unlock. Any time you access it, the memory of reading it gets archived too."

First Aid nodded without comment, and did as instructed. When he returned the chip Ratchet fried it.

First Aid's optic ridges rose. "It's on Teletraan-1," Ratchet said, "under the same restrictions."

"I've kinda wondered what would happen if both of us should catch it at once," First Aid said.

"Optimus and Prowl can access all our data. They'd pass it along to Percy and Jack. But yeah, the survivors would be pretty screwed."

"I know that the Medical Board would have our sparks for this," First Aid said slowly, looking at Ratchet's desk while he articulated the thought, "but why don't we upload our medical knowledge into T-one? That way, if we're both gone, Optimus' crew would still have access to what we know."

"And we'd both be dead, so the Medical Board, which very likely doesn't exist anymore, would have a hard time taking possession of our sparks," Ratchet said. "Lemme think it through for a day or so. It sounds like a good idea, though."

"Cheep," said the team's newest member.

"Of course, you're right," said First Aid, addressing the sparkling. "We hadn't even thought about that."

"About what?" said Ratchet, puzzled.

"Oh, nothing. Just including the kid in the conversation. – Anyway, you'll think about that?"

"Yes." Ratchet smiled at his junior. Including the kid in the conversation! "You got anything else needs discussing?"

"No, I don't think so. The small bay is working quite well. I'd meant to thank Grapple and Hoist."

"Let me do it; carries more weight if it's all official. If that's all, time to get back to work, I think."

"Cheep," the hatchling agreed.

* * *

><p>Prowl stood outside med bay, and was, for himself, unusually indecisive.<p>

He was here to befriend Barricade. Barricade, for Primus' sake, the most-feared interrogator the Decepticons had after Soundwave ... who had really been more about mind-rape, anyway, than any form of skilled interrogation.

Barricade was the only interrogator ever to crack Sideswipe, and that had happened after Soundwave failed to do so.

Soundwave didn't do funny. Sideswipe didn't do anything else. Soundwave, inevitably, had glitched in response to one too many one-liners. Skywarp, sent in to "rescue" Soundwave, thought it was at least as funny as Sideswipe (chained to the wall at the time) did.

So now Prowl was here to see Barricade, cracker of Sideswipe; Barricade, the brother who had been sent away from their family for no sin of his own that Prowl knew of.

Prowl had himself been sent away by their genitors. The last time he had spoken to his, their, genitors, on assuming his adult upgrades, they had disowned him for choosing a military upgrade, rather than one designed for Enforcers.

For stepping beyond family traditions.

The two sparklings younger than Barricade had followed those traditions. And where had it gotten them all? Dead.

Prowl had a sudden thought, and clicked on the battle computer which had gotten him ejected from the family (he also had to retract his battle mask, as it was reflexively activated). If he didn't know how to approach this from a Cybertronian point of view, he'd do it tactically.

Barricade gaped at him. "So ... you've been ordered to befriend me?"

"No," Prowl said firmly. "I've been given the opportunity to help a stranger to the base fit in, make friends, adapt to life among us. If you know someone else well enough to do this with them rather than with me, that's great."

"I only know them from interrogations, which isn't a great basis for friendship. And everyone who's been in med bay has made it clear they don't want anything to do with me."

Prowl paused long enough to kick the battle computer in, and keep his battle mask from activating. "From Ratchet's reports, they've all ignored you except for Gears. That's pretty much what we do in med bay; it's a way of ensuring one another's privacy in an open area. So I wouldn't attach too much importance to it. They'll come around. It'll take a little work on your part, too, but they realize you've given us a tremendous gift, Barricade. The ones who have bonded to hatchlings know that already. Don't think all of us aren't grateful."

"I was forcibly reprogrammed to give you this great gift. It's not like I had a lot of choice in the matter." Barricade glanced down at the hatchling in his arms.

Prowl looked at his own sparkling, black with a touch of white on the extremities, which had not asserted ownership noisily but simply followed him with its beady little optics, everywhere he went, until he surrendered. He'd asked Ratchet if he could borrow his owner, who to Ratchet's surprise had raised no objections, and went with him to a quiet corner to have this chat with Barricade.

Around them, the life of the med bay, with hatchlings, went on.

Ratchet had decreed that until they could talk, any hatchling whose property was in the bay for medical treatment would be allowed access to that property. They were all less fragile now, frankly less stupid, and they all knew what "no" meant.

At least from Ratchet and First Aid. From anyone else, they were likely to debate it.

With the Decepticons largely a threat of the past, most of what Ratchet and First Aid were now doing was maintenance delayed for reasons of lacking supplies, and boo-boos. Bumblebee, for instance, had managed to de-plate a knee, and First Aid was patiently reconstructing that plating while Bumblebee's attention was divided between Sam and the orange sparkling, a little smaller than Sam, cuddled in his arms.

"You were programmed, as you say," Prowl said. "But you took up the challenge. We've all been around mecha who rebel against their programming."

"Yeah. Miserable fraggers."

"Yes, they are. But you didn't do that. You fulfilled your duty honorably and well, and almost killed yourself in the doing, to give us this tremendous gift. Let us welcome you, Barricade. You have nowhere else to go."

"I'd be stupid to decline, wouldn't I." The Decepticon looked miserably down at the sparkling. "I've only got a function here as long as they're little."

"That's not true. If you want to make a life among us, we'll be happy to train you or provide upgrades."

"Really?" Barricade made his first eye contact with his brother. "Interrogation's not much use anymore."

"Let's hope it never will be again. I'll ask Ratchet to talk to you. We'll find a way if we can."

"Then you have a deal, I guess," Barricade the former Decepticon said, and paused. "Look ... can I take my sigil off? It just feels to me like a barrier to fitting in here."

"I don't see why not," Prowl said. "I'll take it up with Ratchet."


	6. Chapter 6

"Barricade needs permanent quarters of his own, to be shared with the hatchlings, or, ideally, adjacent to quarters for them." Optimus was quite firm on that point.

Ratchet said glumly, "I'll miss the little glitches." He looked down at the sparkling in his carrier, and said, "Yes, I will. I will miss you. Oggle-putt."

The sound of senior staff rebooting after a "Does Not Compute" event ran around the table. Sideswipe, made of sturdier stuff, grinned; the hatchling, used to being oggle-putted, merely cheeped.

Then Prowl said, "Is it true that Barricade has been assisting you in the med bay?"

"Sorting and cleaning parts, yes, when he can stand without too much pain. The kids aren't a servos-on group quite so much anymore."

"Would you consider training him in being a medic?"

Ratchet frowned. "If a number of things happen."

Prowl said, "Which are?"

"If he shows interest in the field itself. He hasn't, so far, but he's pretty immersed in the hatchlings' care at the moment, and in a fair amount of constant pain to boot. If he - and you - agree that he should be reformatted, since you have to be able to stand all day to practice medicine. If other mecha are willing to upload sparkling protocols, because we've got a vorn of development at least before they're out of hatchling phase, and then three vorn of sparkling development. If all of you are willing to show up in med bay and have Barricade put his servos into your works."

Ratchet watched them exchange optics with one another at the thought of that, which he had deliberately phrased to be as brutal a statement of fact as possible, and shrugged. "Probably, we've got two vorn, give or take a bit, during which Barricade will be consumed by being the parent of fourteen hatchlings. In the later stages, of course, they require less supervision, and their other mentors will step up a bit too. So he won't be fully occupied by them during all of that period, but we've got time, he's got time, to choose what it is he really wants to do."

"Would you yourself have time to train him, given" - Optimus inclined his head toward the hatchling, refraining from oggle-putting it - "your other responsibilities?"

"I would _make_ time to train any mech among us who wants to take up medicine. _Any_ mech."

"Gears?" Prowl said, in a spirit of inquiry.

"Restrain your sense of humor," Ratchet said firmly.

"Ratchet, are you feeling overwhelmed?" asked Optimus.

"Not ... overwhelmed. Vulnerable, maybe. Since First Aid had the great idea to upload all we know, he and I, into T-one, you wouldn't be without information or protocols if we both caught it, but you'd still be without any fully-trained medics at all."

"Your deaths, individually or simultaneously, are unlikely at this point," said Prowl.

"Not impossible, though. Cosmic rust is still out there; we may have enemies of whom we yet know nothing," said Optimus, sounding very unwilling to voice that particular truth.

The hatchling began to fuss. His properties, who by now knew his tone, passed him from Ratchet to Prowl, and the meeting went on.

Sam added, "And who knows what kind of surprises this particular mudball has in store."

"That, too. So yeah, you guys need more medics. Jack and Percy" - Ratchet nodded to them- "are terrific as back-up, but they have other jobs. You need _dedicated_ medics."

"May I put the word out," Optimus said, "that the training is available?"

"Please do. We'll start with basic field first aid. Not everyone has it; everyone should."

"About quarters for Barricade and the hatchlings, though," Prowl said slowly. "I think we need something close to med bay, don't we?"

"That's less necessary than you might think. They're very healthy, and they all regard med bay as home at this point. They can be brought there without stressing them out, and they aren't likely, young as they are, to get themselves into a situation where they're in danger of bleeding out." Ratchet paused, hoping he hadn't cursed himself by saying that. "Later on, though, proximity to med bay may be a priority."

Wheeljack said, "I'm only running at about 148 percent of maximum right now, so I'll take on the job of finding space for the hatchlings."

The others, all at 197%, chuckled.

* * *

><p>"Hello, Will. Are you in need of assistance?"<p>

"No, Ratchet, but thanks." The newly-minted General Lennox simply stood in the doorway for a moment, watching the chaos that was med bay-with-sparklings. "I just wanted to meet the kids, if you thought that would be all right."

Ratchet knew that Lennox and his mate had purchased a home near the _Ark_. Still, it wasn't often he could get there to see his own sparkling.

"Of course. We can't catch anything from you, unless you've been rolling around in the cosmic rust somewhere."

Will Lennox grinned, and shook his head.

"Come in and sit down on the floor. I warn you, they're about half as big as you are, they probably weigh three times what you do, and some of them will need to be taught manners."

"Good thing I'm a soldier."

Ratchet snorted. "A better thing that you're a tough guy."

The orange hatchling who owned Bumblebee was the first to notice a new friend, and having had hatchling fun with Sam, came belting over almost before Ratchet had lowered himself to the floor beside Will.

Barricade had turned from the sink where he was washing parts, and watched curiously.

The orange 'ling came to a stop in front of Will, tilted his head, and chirred at him. Will reached out, slowly, and stroked the top of the helm.

The 'ling trilled with pleasure, and turned his head into the caress.

This attracted the attention of the others, and they all trundled over to see if they could have some of whatever it was that their hatchmate found so enticing.

The orange 'ling pushed his head into the center of Will's chest, and knocked him flat on his back.

"Hey," Will said, laughing, "what was that all about, little one?" He sat up using only his belly muscles.

Ratchet smiled. "He's trying to learn your EM signature. Humans' is strongest in the brain. Put your head up to his chest. He'll learn you, that way."

Will did this thing, feeling rather silly, and pulled back in time to see the 'ling's expression change to one of open astonishment. Oh, you're a _Sam_! I thought there was only one of him!

The hatchling, who at this point weighed upwards of four hundred and sixty pounds, attempted to sit in Will's lap.

Ratchet forestalled him. "No, silly 'ling, you're too heavy. You can't sit in Sam's lap any more, either."

"At one point, though, they could?"

"When they first got here, they weighed about half of what they do now. It was doable, if briefly. About five breem in Sam said it felt like his feet had fallen into recharge clear up to the hips."

The hatchling had huffed into a cross-legged position next to Will. He obliged with another helm-pet, and then suddenly had to dispense twelve more.

Twelve, not thirteen. The little yellow one sat at Barricade's feet, watching intently: his default.

The 'lings, having met Will and exhausted his possibilities as amusement, dispersed throughout med bay. Will said to Ratchet, "I think I'll go say hello to Barricade. Never met him, outside of the battlefield."

"Come along, then," Ratchet said, and offered Will his palm. (Two hatchlings beat Will to it.) "I'll introduce you."

* * *

><p>It proved to be Barricade's day for visitors. Two joor later, a very large mech loomed in the door of med bay.<p>

"Hello," Optimus Prime said to Barricade.

"Hello ..." Barricade decided to tack "sir" onto that. "Were you looking for Ratchet? He went to get parts. He says to comm him if you need him."

"Actually, I came to see you, Barricade. And please, it's 'Optimus.'" The Prime seated himself on the floor, and the hatchlings (even Sunstreaker's owner) ran to investigate their new friend, who greeted them with a fond smile and gentle caresses, but refrained from picking any of them up. "You've been with us for a few decaorn at this point, and my duties have kept me from welcoming you properly."

"Some of the others have spoken of how busy you've been with the humans."

"Yes. – I was wondering if you wished any form of memorial service for your deactivated comrades."

Barricade was struck still and silent. Finally he found his voice to say, "You would do that for them?"

"For all we've found, and for any others you think appropriate. We may never find - evidence - of all of them."

Barricade bowed his head in thought. There wasn't a mech among them he would miss, but still ... "Yes. Please."

"Do you wish any particular form of service?"

"No. Just what you usually do." Barricade's face froze for a moment. "We knew you held services for our dead, as well as your own. We thought it was because that was the only thing that kept Megatron from executing Autobot prisoners on sight."

"No. It's my duty as Prime. It's also - I don't want to call it 'a pleasure.' It is the last obligation to those given life by Primus which I can fulfill."

The green mech whom Fireflight had thoughtlessly christened "Daisy" peeped at Prime to pick him up, and when he was ignored, flailed his way up into Optimus' lap.

"Fulfilling a necessary obligation. Yeah, that's what I'm doing with these little guys."

"You aren't - attached - to any of them?" Daisy peeped again, and then patiently began to climb Optimus' tall frame.

"No particular hatchling has bonded to me, not yet, anyway. Ratchet says my programming is aimed solely at care-giving until they mature a bit."

"You can't really appreciate them, then."

"Not the way the 'bots they've bonded to do, no. I still get quite a kick out of them, though." Barricade removed his much larger rust-red sibling from a position of triumph atop the yellow hatchling's neck, gave the red one a brief cuddle, and set him down. The yellow hatchling hopped up to Barricade's knee and told him all about it.

Daisy achieved Optimus' shoulder, and told _him_ all about it.

"They like you," Barricade said, the yellow hatchling in his servo.

"I wouldn't be surprised if they remember me. Their first night here, I rocked quite a few of them to sleep." Optimus removed Daisy gently from his shoulder, and stroked him thoughtfully. "At any rate, I'll schedule the service. Shall I hold it in here, or will you come to our chapel?"


	7. Chapter 7

Prowl showed up in the med bay, accepted their sparkling in his carrier from Ratchet, was greeted with a series of trills and beeps, actually smiled, and went to find Barricade. "I've cleared you to come to the rec room, if you'd like," he said.

"The ... rec room?" Barricade said. "Let me check with Ratchet. This one isn't quite willing to recharge yet, and he's had a rough day."

The yellow sparkling's systems had rejected even medical energon all that morning. By afternoon, the vomiting had ceased, or at least the enthusiastic clear-across-med-bay-in-a-single-heave part of it. The hatchling had kept energon down for two joor now, but hadn't been hungry since that refueling. He refused absolutely to be laid down, and Barricade had spent most of the day with the little one in the crook of one shoulder, while he cleaned up parts, or slightly-used energon, with the other servo.

Ratchet, manifesting from his office, said, "I don't see why you can't take him with you. I'll get a couple of bottles of energon, one for each of the hatchlings. If you feed one, the other's likely to want some too." He looked at Barricade. "You need a pain chip?"

"Can I take one with me? This one's beginning to fade a bit."

Thus armed, along with a couple of ralph-absorbent rags for emergencies, they adjourned to the rec room, which wasn't crowded, as it was mid-shift. Bumblebee and Mirage were playing a human game called "poker" with cards the size of a single bed; Sunstreaker was there, alone, as Sideswipe was with the Prime. Gears was alone as well, and rather ostentatiously staying that way.

The yellow twin got up as soon as he saw them approach, and said, "Hey! How's my little guy doing?"

The sparkling squealed and chirred, reaching for him. Barricade said, "He's been vomiting all joor."

Sunstreaker said, "Don't care," and held out an imperious servo.

"Your finish -" Prowl said.

"Washes. Gimme the hatchling."

"Wash your servos first? He's been pretty sick," Barricade said.

Sunny gave him a Look, but went off to do that little thing.

Gears smirked at his departing back. "Whaddaya doing with the lame 'con, Prowl?" he said.

"Inappropriate, Gears," Prowl said austerely. "Report to me in the morning for punishment detail." He hadn't missed that Barricade's shoulders slumped when the mini-bot said that.

Sunny returned with damp servos, and Gears, who feared both the twins with good reason (mini-bot bowling), gave it a rest.

The hatchling said, "Queeble," on transfer, vomited down Sunstreaker's collar fairing, and remained in a miserable huddle in his servo, although he was transferred to the other side of Sunny's neck. (Gears laughed.) Sunstreaker took the proffered ralph rag and put it to the use for which it was intended, whereupon Mirage rose hastily and ran for the door that lead to the washracks. He only made it to the recycling bin when bodily processes intervened, and he joined the hatchling in the ralph-fest. (Gears laughed harder.)

Bumblebee, a kind soul, shuffled away the poker game, and didn't laugh at all.

Sunstreaker dropped the soiled rag into his own lap, and used that servo to comfort the hatchling, gently stroking the tiny helm.

Prowl did the only logical thing in response to this visual input: he fritzed.

* * *

><p>Barricade said to Bumblebee, "Would you comm Ratchet, please?"<p>

"You did the right thing," Ratchet said to Barricade.

Barricade shrugged. "Not hard to figure out," he said, and shoved the pain chip into his ulnar port.

"Would have been for some 'bots," said Ratchet cheerfully, hooking the tiny mech up to an IV feeder. It squawked at him when he pierced the thin soft line with a needle actually meant for humans. "Yes, well, I'm sorry," he said to the sparkling, who huffed at him in return, "but it had to be done."

"But did you have to hurt him?" Sunstreaker said anxiously, hovering at his elbow and shifting from one pede to another.

"Sunny. Look. One, but only one, of us has considerable training in the medical management of sparklings, and is that me? Why yes, I believe it is. Now shut up and go back to being a baby-holder." Ratchet suited action to word, and gently placed the sparkling in one yellow servo, the IV bag less gently in the other. "Take him to the rocking chair, hold the bag above his head, and I'll be with you in a minute to hang it."

Sunstreaker gave him a look of extreme mistrust, and followed his orders.

Ratchet turned back to Barricade. "Give yourself a medical washdown before you touch any of the others, okay? I don't know if this crud is contagious or not."

"Scrubbing my servos to the elbow, like I've seen you and Firstie do?"

"That's the bunny. But I want you to hit the washrack too. You've been carrying my little patient around all day, probably got hatchling-barf in every seam in your armor."

Barricade, to his credit, didn't flinch or grimace, merely turned and limped to the washrack in one corner of the bay which patients used.

Ratchet turned to his other patient, and rebooted Prowl after checking his code.

Prowl blinked, twice, and met his optics. "Is Sunstreaker ill?" he said anxiously.

"No, he isn't. He and Sideswipe apparently have parental coding somewhere under all that aggression."

"Aggression and practical joking," Prowl said, wiping a servo down his face.

"Which, if you think about it long enough, is a form of aggression."

"Yeah." Prowl tried to sit up, but wobbled.

Ratchet gave him a friendly shove in the center of the chestplate. "Another ten breem, maybe. That wasn't a hard crash, but still ..."

The hatchling cuddled into the join of Prowl's neck and shoulder cheeped.

"He's still there ..."

"Refused to be parted from you, actually. Now, if you'll stay put for those ten breem, I have another patient to see to."

"I give you my parole," Prowl said formally.

Ratchet slapped him on the shoulder in comradely fashion, and went to collect an IV hanger.

Sunstreaker was sitting, unfocused, in the rocking chair. "He doesn't want to be rocked?" Ratchet said, carefully taking the bag, and hanging it with equal care not to jostle the needle taped to the hatchling's forearm.

"He queebled a lot when I did, so I stopped."

Ratchet didn't have to have that explained. A queeble had preceded every instance of projectile vomiting that day. "No vomiting?"

"Dry-heaved a few times, that's all."

"Mm. I'll take him for long enough for you to get your bad self cleaned up in the washrack."

The hatchling trilled piteously on transfer, and trilled more loudly when Sunstreaker took the first few steps away from him. The yellow twin turned back, opticking his charge anxiously.

"Go," Ratchet said, waving him on. "Wash that possibly-contagious baby barf out of yourself. You and Barricade can help each other. – He'll be back," Ratchet said, in his talking-to-hatchlings voice. "We just don't want you to make yourself sick all over again, okay?"

It took that before Sunstreaker turned and went.

* * *

><p>History does not record how or even whether Sunstreaker helped Barricade, and vice versa, in the washrack; imagination must suffice.<p>

* * *

><p>"Yeah," First Aid said, "smells like somebody was sick in here."<p>

"Several separate times," Ratchet agreed. "So: Prowl's gone to his quarters, and the hatchlings are in their crib, down for the night, except for the sick one; he's sleeping with Sunstreaker on that berth in the corner. Sunny himself is fine, and will be filling his usual shift in the morning. Nothing else to report. A very quiet day."

"Except for the sound of hatchlings heaving energon clear across the room," said First Aid, examining the extent of the redecoration.

"Except for that. Sorry about leaving you the cleaning. We kept up as best we could through the day, but the hatchling got ahead on points. See you in a while."

The yellow hatchling, in the way of very young babies, had fully recovered overnight, and querulously demanded a bottle when Sunstreaker rose to stand his shift. (And only from Sunstreaker would that bottle come, he insisted. First Aid let the yellow twin's supervisor know Sunstreaker would be late, and mercilessly told him why, as well.)

He had another a joor later when his hatchmates rose for their breakfast.

And a third at shift change, a joor and a half after that.

Ratchet shrugged. "He's got a lot of fluid and calories to replace. He'll know when to quit."

The hatchling eventually enjoyed bottles from Sunstreaker, Ratchet, and Barricade, along with half of one from Skyfire, whose owner went into a deep, deep dudgeon when required to share him. Then he went abruptly to sleep mid-bottle in Skyfire's servo, and stayed that way (although not in Skyfire's servo, which was jealously reclaimed by his owner) until late afternoon, when Sunstreaker returned.

This time Sunny, cornered at the entrance to med bay, smiled, stooped, picked up his owner, and tucked him into the crook of his neck. The hatchling cooed for the first time in two days, and snuggled in.

That smile fell off Sunstreaker's face like a 'con downed by a sabot round, though, when Ratchet said, "You're here? Good. You can take care of the hatchlings while Barricade and I have a chat."

Sunstreaker's optics widened. "Me? But I don't know-"

"You know all you need to know. If they fuss, pick them up and cuddle them. They don't get fed for another joor, so you shouldn't have to do much. If you want to keep them occupied, put their crib down on the floor, lay on the floor yourself, and let them crawl all over you."

The meeting was not much of a success. Ratchet had long ago caused a mirror which gave him a view of the bay to be installed in his office, but Barricade, facing the window, kept breaking into a grin, which required Ratchet to look into the mirror.

"Ahem," Ratchet said.

"Sorry," said Barricade. "They're just so danged cute, you know?"

"Yes, I do know. Here's the sandpaper you asked for. If you're going to take off that sigil, do it gently, over about a decaorn. Otherwise you'll open up your chestplate. Barricade!"

"So danged cute."

"Yes, they are. Furthermore, I know how cute that deadly yellow bot is when he's with them. Now, look, pay attention, I have a frame that might suit you."

Barricade's focus was suddenly fully on Ratchet, for the first time since the discussion began. "A dead mech's, right?"

"Yes. That's available right away. If you wait for me to make something from scratch, I can put one together in about ten orn ."

"Can I know ... whose it was?"

"Jazz'."

Barricade's faceplates clenched around some strong emotion. "No. Can't do that. I liked Jazz when he was with - the faction. He was the only one who - no. I can't."

Ratchet said soberly, ignoring his own relief, "My experience with reformatting mecha into - previously occupied - frames is this: universally, they report there's no trace of the former owner in the frame itself. On top of that, the new owner's body language is unique, which makes a remarkable difference; no one will think you are Jazz out of the corner of their eye." He paused. "And you can have a paint change. Sunny can do that; he's remarkably good at it, in fact."

"I'll have to think about it. I just don't know. I don't think I can be comfortable with the idea." The ex-Decepticon looked out into med bay. "And what will they think?"

"At this age, they're mostly reading our EM output to identify us. They won't fail to recognize you, if that's what you're thinking."

"I'd have to be in his spark casing, wouldn't I?"

"No. After Chicago I've plenty of spares."

"What could you do about ... changing his proportions? Jazz was always ... identifiably Jazz. If I can get around my respect for him," Barricade said, which made Ratchet's pump sing a bit, " it's more being seen as trying to step into his identity I worry about, than anything else." Barricade hesitated. "My brother ... was attached to him."

"Oh, he's discussed that with you?"

Barricade snorted. "No. This is _Prowl_ we're talking about. I'll have to let him know I know who we are to one another. Remember, the faction" - Ratchet noted that Barricade had twice not said "my faction" - "had Soundwave, and he could read a mech's thoughts at a short distance. Prowl must have been thinking about me one time when Soundwave was ... eavesdropping. He came back to the _Nemesis_ and tried to blackmail me over it."

"What did you do about that?" Ratchet asked.

"Told Megatron myself."

Ratchet grinned, and wondered if Barricade too had a battle computer. He didn't ask, though, just said, "Let me think about altering Jazz' proportions. I can do it, but it presents some ... structural problems. Maintaining strength, and so forth. Consider both choices, though, okay? It really will only take me a decaorn to put something together from scratch." Ratchet pushed a medically-lockable datapad across to Barricade. "The passcode for this is Barricade 14. Change it, think up some sparkling names, make me a sketch of your ideal model. Then record them both on this."

"Praxian door-wing," Barricade said without hesitation. "I don't need to sketch that for you, do I?"


	8. Chapter 8

"You can do that for him?" Prowl said, with disbelief, cutting across Optimus, who had been going to say something.

"Easily. I have the specs and I have the parts. It won't even take the ten orn I told him it would, and I won't have to use Jazz."

Silence fell over the meeting. Optimus finally broke it by saying, "I confess I'm glad to hear that. I wasn't ready to see Jazz, someone identifiably Jazz, walking among us again."

A general murmur of assent ran around the table. Cybertronians had very long, and almost perfect, memories; the great-great-great-grandchildren of the current crop of humans now alive on Earth would all be dead before the pain of losing Jazz was fully gone for the Autobots.

Ironhide's memory was of course fresher, and more painful still. But very little was left of his body to use, and even that cosmic rust had made unsalvageable.

Prowl said nothing, only shuddered.

"I couldn't bear to part him out," Ratchet said. "And for the record, I would make quite a few cosmetic changes before I used Jazz to reformat someone."

"Best we don't until we have to," Optimus murmured. "But so far as Barricade's upgrade goes, what do we need to do to make it happen?"

"Assign Sunstreaker and Skyfire to me for the day before and three days after the reformat, that's all. The sparklings like them."

"Give me a couple of orn notice on that one, will you?" Prowl said. "I'll have to juggle some schedules."

"Sure," said Ratchet.

* * *

><p>"Wow," Barricade said. "That was fast." He put the sandpaper down.<p>

Ratchet smirked, self-satisfied. "Consider it a sketch. I want your input; if you want to make changes, now's the time to suggest them."

An adult Cybertronian frame, a Praxian door-wing model, lay between them on the berth. It was covered in gray primer at this stage, which left the immobile faceplates a brooding mask.

Still, it was a handsome visage, managing to keep the proportions of Barricade's helm roughly intact.

Barricade said with a stoic calm that Ratchet saw right through, " Can it stay on the berth today? I'd like to come and look at it a couple of times." He was silent for a few moments, and then said, "What a relief it will be not to limp anymore."

"Hurts, huh," Ratchet said. These tough guys.

"Yes, almost all the time. Only when I've finished the exercises at night does it stop."

"Do you need a pain chip for it right now?"

"I'll let you know if it gets that bad. There's something else I want to talk to you about, though."

"Well?"

"A couple of mecha were talking about you teaching field first aid. Can I join that class?"

Ratchet cocked his head. Was he really willing to work with an ex-Decepticon, when his fellows might be at risk from said Decepticon's ministrations? Still, he had a sense now of who Barricade was at spark, and that mech, suddenly saddled with duties the mech would have unhesitatingly described as "unwanted," had risen to the challenge, and fulfilled them well. Had continued to do so with patience and grace. "Yes. I'll put your name on the class roster."

"Thanks."

"Are you interested in medicine? As your job?"

Barricade startled him by saying passionately, "It's all I've ever been interested in. I was saving up to put myself through the training to be a medic when the war broke out, and it was pretty obvious that even if I'd somehow gotten the money together right away, I wouldn't be able to finish the course, probably wouldn't _survive_ to finish the course. Iacon was already under siege. So I bought the interrogator programming, which covers a lot of anatomy and physiology, instead, and here we are."

"Far too many thousands of vorn later."

"Yes. And while I wouldn't say I prospered as a Decepticon, I survived."

"That you did. Let me think it through, okay? If you really want it, I'll do my best to see you get the training."

"Thanks, Ratchet."

"No, thank _you_. I'm going to start assigning you patient duties. Even before we get the programming installed, you can take histories, and sort for triage."

"Triage?"

"Two mecha come in at the same time. One has a wound that's pumping energon in discrete spurts, one is in considerable pain from a deep, slowly-leaking wound. Who gets treated first?"

"The one whose wound spurts. A main line's been compromised."

"Good. I'll also sit down with you and we'll find out how much else you know already. – If your physical condition is such that it's too painful for you to work on a given day, I expect to be told that. We'll cope when you need to be our patient instead of our co-worker." Skyfire, across the bay, made eye contact and a "Come here" motion to Rachet, who nodded in acknowledgment, and finished up with, "So. Any last questions?"

"No." Barricade paused, and added formally, "Thank you, Ratchet. I appreciate the trouble you're going to for me."

Ratchet gave him a buffet on the shoulder, and betook himself to Skyfire.

Who told him something, ten breem later after the emergency had been dealt with, that made Ratchet blink and reset. "You what?"

Skyfire patiently repeated, "I've heard that you're looking for quarters large enough to support Barricade and the hatchlings. I've got a lot of extra room in mine, and I'd like to volunteer it."

"Where would you be, then?"

"If you just let me keep my recharge berth in there, I'll be fine. I don't need a lot of space, otherwise. Most of my life's in the lab or in the sky." Skyfire paused. "And that way, I'll be available to the hatchlings, and to Barricade, if I'm needed."

"Hm," said Ratchet. "You willing to get the sparkling-protocol upgrade?"

Skyfire said, "Yes, so long as it doesn't compromise my flight protocols."

Ratchet felt a great weight lift off his and (though he didn't know it yet) Wheeljack's shoulders. "All right. Let me run it through the senior staff meeting tomorrow. I can't imagine they'll say no, if you're willing to get the upgrades."

* * *

><p>Optimus shook his head. "This is all coming together almost too easily."<p>

"Yeah, I'd say," Wheeljack muttered under his breath. The time he'd spent going over blueprints of the _Ark_, trying to find space that had to be there somewhere, was beginning to gnaw at him; he hadn't blown anything up in _joor_.

Ratchet ignored him. "It's an extraordinarily generous offer on Skyfire's part. He's also willing to accept sparkling-protocol programming, so long as it doesn't interfere with his flight protocols, which is relatively easy to ensure."

"Since it's pretty unlikely he'll be doing both at once," Wheeljack said.

Prowl said, "Outfit him with a holoform generator. If worse somehow comes to worst and he's by himself trying to evacuate the 'lings, he can corral them into a crib, use the holoform to load it, and be gone."

Ratchet nodded. "Easy-peasy. I'll schedule it with him."

Wheeljack shrugged. "Okay. I'll comm Skyfire for a time to see his quarters, and we'll find out if they can be made to work."

Grapple said, "Pretty sure they can be. Skyfire's size meant that he needed a lot of room. If all he needs is the berth space, you've got almost as much floor space as the med bay to work with."

* * *

><p>Nineteen orn later, Skyfire's quarters had been revamped. A washrack had already been installed, sized for Skyfire; it was a small matter to Grapple and Hoist to add another three shower heads in descending heights, and a tub at a height convenient for washing hatchlings. Skyfire's own room had been soundproofed but otherwise left intact; another for Barricade, equally soundproofed, carved out of Mt. St. Hilary beside it. Cubes and bins lined the walls of what had been Skyfire's sitting room, and things to climb on, hide in, sail off, and contest ownership of had been erected in the center.<p>

Fourteen small recharge bunks, staggered in lines of three and four, lined one wall. An energon dispenser with multiple settings, storage for bottles, and a cleanser mechanism lined another.

"Wow," Barricade said, on limping in. His arms were full of crib, which in its turn was full of 'lings.

Sideswipe, sent to escort him, poked his helm in, opticked it all, said, "Wow, cool," and left.

Skyfire smiled. "Welcome," he said.

"Thanks. Really appreciate that you're willing to share." Barricade set down the crib near the middle of the room, and removed its top. Fourteen hatchlings streamed out, surrounded him, and then thirteen of them went immediately into the floor-level space designed to hide in. Skyfire's owner went to him, and cheeped imperiously to be picked up. Repeatedly.

Skyfire did, more to hit the off switch on the noise than anything else. His owner surveyed her new surroundings from on high, uttered a four-part phrase that was clearly part scolding, and fell silent.

"Have you decided on a name for her?" Barricade asked curiously. "Ratchet asked me to name them, but I've come up blank for most of the hatchlings."

"Sonata," Skyfire said.

Barricade blinked. "That was fast. I don't have that human word. What does it mean?"

Skyfire remembered that Barricade's comms were still locked down. "It's a musical term. When she has something to say, it usually comes out as a complete sonata - three or four parts of contrasting tone."

Barricade grinned and reached down to pick up the rust-red hatchling, who had trundled over to his foot, cheeped once during the conversation, and then patiently waited to be picked up. "It's a nice name," he said.

"So she's the only one who has a name right now?"

"No. Sunstreaker's taken to calling his 'Nator,' which he says is short for 'Terminator.' They showed that movie in the rec room a couple of orn ago; first time he'd seen it. Gotta say it fits."

Skyfire grinned. "Yes, it does."

"I'm going to sit on the floor for a while, so that they can get used to their new place. If you had something else to do ..."

"No," said Skyfire, "I'm actually on duty with them, and you, for the first half of my shift today. If that's all right with you?"

"Better for them to have us both here, I think." Barricade bent to the floor-level cube, and held onto it to get himself down to the floor, letting his good leg do the work of lowering him.

"When do you get your reformat?" Skyfire said, following suit much more easily.

"Week from today. I didn't want to change too much for them all at once. Ratchet said I wouldn't have to wait for more than three days, but ..." the former interrogator shrugged.

The hatchlings had swarmed him once they realized he was available. About a quarter of them had returned to the play area after touching Barricade-base, and another quarter were investigating Skyfire, apparently reassuring themselves that this Skyfire-shaped object was in fact their Skyfire. The other half were making wider and wider circles of discovery, although those circles tended to be Barricade-centric.

Skyfire turned his head away from Barricade to smirk. This was the dangerous Barricade, who had interrogated him to within an inch of his life when Starscream first brought him to the _Nemesis_? Whose very vibes had frightened him when they passed in the halls during the brief time that he, too, had been a Decepticon? This tired, patient, kind gravitational center to the hatchlings' universe, who thought of them first and himself, apparently, not at all?

Skyfire stroked his owner with a pensive finger slightly larger in the first joint than her whole body. Life leads us into some strange places, he thought, very far from where we thought we'd go.


	9. Chapter 9

Ratchet showed up with Silverbolt and Fireflight four joor later. "Came to help with feeding," he said to Skyfire, who was filling the last of fourteen bottles with a gaggle of hungry hatchlings peeping around his feet.

A smaller gaggle was napping with Barricade, who had dropped off next to the hiding place. None of the sleepers woke even when various 'lings claimed their owners.

"Let him sleep," Ratchet said, floating a therm-reg blanket over Barricade. "That leg bothers him more than he lets on."

Ratchet, the pro, could feed three at once. The other adults claimed an extra 'ling each, and got their owners fed as well.

The ones who had been fed went to sleep with Barricade, on or under his blanket according to their varying tastes. The second shift began exploratory journeys after their bottles, since they had already had their naps. But for them too, Barricade was base, home, port in any storm.

Skyfire rose and stretched his considerable self. "I've got to get the bottles cleaned up, and get to my shift," he said.

The two Aerialbots rose as well. "You flying today?" Silverbolt said.

"No, I'm in the lab."

"Too bad!" FIreflight chimed in. "You could've come flying with us!"

The two taller jets exchanged a smile over his head. Then Silverbolt said, "Come on, short stuff. We had the fun, let's help with the clean-up."

* * *

><p>Left alone in quarters with the hatchlings and a sleeping Barricade, Ratchet watched him recharge, and did some brooding.<p>

He wondered, he couldn't know, if Barricade was resigned to making his life with the Autobots, or was some kind of mole, or spy, or whatever function unknown (as yet) enemies had programmed him for. Would he, in training the mech in medicine, be allowing a potential mass murderer to have access to the innermost workings of mecha he'd served with, respected, even loved, for the long season of this war? He'd seen a lot of Barricade's coding on his arrival at the _Ark_, but not, of necessity, all of it. That would require several full solar cycles of hacking. It was a brutal thing to do to anyone, and as there was no medical need for it, Ratchet steadfastly refused to hack any mech down to base code.

Still, his medic's reservations aside, Ratchet was a soldier, as much so as Ironhide had been. He planned for the worst, so that if something better than that happened, he could afford to be pleasantly surprised.

Training Barricade in medicine when he didn't know the mech's intentions ... wasn't good planning.

He knew he couldn't know. But Smokescreen might.

* * *

><p>"So I'll be dropping by to talk to you about your plans," Smokescreen said easily.<p>

Most mecha liked Smokescreen; the ability to make oneself liked was the only truly necessary item in the con man's toolbox. But somewhere along the line, Optimus Prime and his portable circus had transformed (pun intended) a con man into the base psychologist.

The base psychologist found that he was only using the same tools to a different end, and curbed his natural inclinations toward dishonesty by asking himself, "WWOPD? - what would Optimus Prime do?"

So far, Prime's shadow was making him a better mech than he once was, and Smokescreen was honest enough with himself to admit that he liked the difference.

Barricade was carefully sanding away the very last layers of his Decepticon sigil, and saw no reason to stop for Smokescreen. In another two orn he would be very glad to put himself into Ratchet's hands and wake up in another body, since he'd used this one up, but he just couldn't stand the visual reminder a minute longer. And when Ratchet went to re-use his chestplate - he would, sometime, or it might be Barricade himself who pelted into spare parts storage, desperately seeking a cast-off of his earlier self - he wouldn't have to label a perfectly undeserving mech a Decepticon.

"Ratchet and I have talked about getting me some medical training," he said in response to Smokey's question about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. "I'm already doing a little bit of the work in the med bay."

"Is that your long-term goal?"

Barricade sat back from his task, at ease for at least a couple of minutes. "Yes. I had decided on medicine as a career just when the war broke out. I was saving up to go to Iacon and enroll in the training when it was besieged."

"Tough," murmured Smokey.

Barricade shrugged. "I bought interrogation protocols with my savings instead, as it's actually a related field, and Megatron took me on after the Autobots told me they didn't want an interrogator."

"Mm. What was it like, suddenly being given hatchlings to care for?"

Barricade caught himself in an infinitesimal pause that Smokescreen labeled "I really don't want to talk about it." But he gathered himself together, shrugged again, and said, "You know the story, right?"

"I know what happened, yes. I want to know how you feel about it."

"If somebody'd asked me before - before Starscream did what he did," Barricade said, looking him straight in the optics, "I'd've said no frellin' way. But I wasn't given the choice. And while he didn't explain it to me, I knew what Starscream was doing, and why he was doing it ... he put sixteen lives into my hands, and I wasn't going to fail them, or him, or the rest of us, by screwing up."

"Sixteen? I thought you got here with fourteen."

"I did. Two died on the way."

"How did that happen?"

"They refused to nurse, and didn't wake up after a nap during the first day out. Ratchet said it looked like spark-compatibility issues."

"How did you feel about that?"

"We were in transit when it happened. I had to keep going. At the time I didn't feel much of anything, though I cried my optics out when we could stop for a while."

"What did the survivors do?"

"They kept away from the bodies, mostly. When we stopped it was almost like they were trying to comfort me, but ... didn't know how."

"Have any of them bonded to you?"

"No, not the way they have to other mecha."

"You resent that?"

Barricade's whole face lit up with a smile. "Are you joking? They're growing into who they need to be. How could I resent that?"

A timer chimed from under somebody's plating, and Barricade was pretty sure it wasn't his.

"Well, that's it for our session today," Smokescreen said, slapping himself on the arm, whereupon the chime fell silent. "I understand you'll be in med bay most of tomorrow, and toward afternoon you'll be sedated for some tests. I'll be by to ask you some questions during that period, and also before you're fully awake after the procedure. You may not remember those sessions, so I'll tape them for you."

"Saves me having to take the happy pills just for you," Barricade said, and grinned.

* * *

><p>Smokescreen, a guest at the daily senior-staff meeting, said, "Barricade seems to be adjusting well to what was essentially a complete disruption of his life, something many of us at this table would not have been able to do. He also has a very balanced and mature attitude toward the sparklings themselves, wishing them only the best." The psychologist paused. "So far as I can tell, that's less a matter of programming than of Barricade's own maturity. By his own account, he has always chosen to cope with existing conditions, rather than resent or sulk over them. His adaptation to being given responsibility for the hatchlings is consistent with that approach."<p>

"I'm mainly concerned," Ratchet said, "that he is a mole, or a spy, or some other function assigned him by forces we don't yet know of."

Red Alert, Prowl, and Optimus all frowned. Red Alert because he had been given something else to be paranoid about, Prowl because he felt _he_ should have thought of that, and Optimus because he'd forgotten how good a soldier Ratchet really was.

"After I talk to him while he's sedated, I can make an educated guess about that. Right now I would say that if the genuineness Barricade showed me is an act, it's a very good act." The former con mech fiddled with the datapad in front of him. "It's possible he has me fooled. It's not very likely, but that's why I've arranged to speak with him while he's sedated. It lowers a mech's barriers. If he's not genuine, he won't be able to hide it from me, and if I have doubts, Ratchet" - he made a brief eye contact with Prowl - "has agreed to look again at his code."

Red Alert said, "His interrogation programs ..."

"Were completely overwritten by hatchling and sparkling protocols. I've been in his processor, and I _know_," Ratchet interrupted. "Starscream was very thorough. There isn't a single complete line of that code left. There may be some incomplete commands from the interrogation protocols, some junk code, floating around Barricade's processor, but Starscream got rid of most of it."

"Very well," said Red Alert, in the tone of voice of one who needs more time to really accept something, and more time after that to get an item off his "to worry about" list.

"After the reformat, we will be able to integrate him more thoroughly into the crew," Optimus said. "Has he any friends among them, yet?"

"Not yet, but he's been dealing with a sapping amount of pain every day," Ratchet said. "He and Sunstreaker don't seem to dislike each other, but that's as far as I'll go." The medic looked over to Sideswipe. "Has your brother talked about him at all?"

"Once, after the hatchling barfed all over him. He didn't say anything else about it." Sideswipe frowned. "He's talked about him a few more times, but only in reference to the hatchling."

"Okay. So maybe half of one friend."

"And a brother," Prowl added.

"Who - ?" said Red Alert, lines of worry beginning to pleat his forehead.

"Me, actually." Prowl smiled. "I don't think he's managed to suborn me yet, Red."

"Gears doesn't like him," Ratchet said.

Optimus sighed. "Does Gears like any mech?" he asked the company at large.

"He likes you," Grapple said with a grin.

"Well," Optimus said, "tell him to get his act together, and stop it."


	10. Chapter 10

The funny-colored pink stuff went into Barricade's energon line, and his whole body relaxed. "Oh, yeah, that's nice," he said.

Ratchet grinned. "You'll think so for about fifteen minutes. Smokey, the floor is yours."

Barricade, already a bit pie-eyed, looked up at him and said, "Hello. Interrogation time?"

"Yep. How's it feel to be on the other side of the table?"

Barricade giggled. "Not on t'other side. 'M on the table isself."

Smokey realized that he wasn't going to have to count backward for Barricade to go under. Barricade was already about as far under as he could go and still make sense. And fifteen minutes? Pssh. He might have five.

"Barricade, why did you come to the _Ark_?"

* * *

><p>When Barricade woke, he was aware that his leg no longer hurt.<p>

He lifted a servo to wipe his face, and promptly punched himself in the mouth.

"Hey, hey, take it easy," said Smokescreen's voice, and a servo took his wrist, gently, and moved it away from his face.

Someone wiped his forehead. "It'll take you a little while to get used to your new body, Barricade," Ratchet's voice said. "Just rest."

Barricade said, "Yeah, I can do that."

Smokescreen said, "Wow. Ain't interviewing him for a while."

"No. Right now he's awake, but the connections between speech-governing cables and processor aren't fully established. He thinks he's making sense."

"I'm making perfect sense," Barricade said indignantly.

The other two, for some reason, laughed. Then Ratchet said, "When he unshutters his optics, he'll have made the connections. He won't be very co-ordinated for a while after that, not really truly awake yet, but at that point you'll be able to understand his answers. Let me know when you're finished, will you? Prowl's asked to be commed when he wakes up."

"Sure will." There was a sound of someone sitting, and footsteps moved off.

"Where are the 'lings?" Barricade asked, some time later. He had a hunch he'd been drifting in and out of consciousness. When he got no answer he tried to get up, but the voice and the hands were there again.

"Barricade, it's all right. The hatchlings are with Skyfire" - Barricade heard the name as "Starscream" - "and Sunstreaker."

How could that be? "But one's a 'con," he said, "and one is a 'bot."

Then his optics unshuttered, and he was looking up into Smokescreen's concerned faceplates. "Oh," he said, speaking quite slowly. "I thought you said 'Starscream,' but you said 'Skyfire.'"

"Yes," Smokescreen said. "Welcome back to the world of consensus reality. Remember who I am?"

'Smokescreen. I want to answer your questions."

"Good. Barricade, how do you feel about Optimus Prime? "

* * *

><p>Barricade was aware that he had missed part of the conversation. He blinked, said, "Sorry, Smokey. Drifted off there."<p>

"He finished," said another voice. "It's Prowl." A servo claimed one of Barricade's.

He looked up into that countenance, so like and yet unlike his own, and squeezed the servo. "Something to tell you," he said, "brother."

* * *

><p>Smokescreen reported formally to Optimus. "The results - I have to tell you, Optimus, that these things are never 100% certain. Given that, I am about as sure as I can be that Barricade's ties to the Decepticon cause are severed." Smokey paused. "He hasn't been here long enough, and he hasn't been healthy enough during the time he was here, to form any bonds. But he will, now that he's physically restored."<p>

"That's a relief," said Optimus, hands folded in front of himself. "Can you give me percentages?"

"Eighty-five percent certain he's genuine. There's a human test I gave him, which is complex since humans are usually quite conflicted creatures, and he scored at 92% truthful on it." Smokey paused to order his thoughts. "Also, in general, all the Decepticon speech I've ever been exposed to is quite ... blustering. His no longer is. Word choice is of course telling, and his are skewed toward openness and community-building."

"Good. Very good news indeed. I'll have you attend the senior-staff meeting tomorrow, Smokey, to share this officially with us."

"Great." Smokescreen rose. "By that time, I'll have the data organized."

* * *

><p>Barricade had drifted off again. "Should I be concerned that he's so ... drowsy?" Prowl asked, as Ratchet orbited the berth Barricade lay on.<p>

"No. Recharge is the time when new connections are formed between the neural nexus and the autonomic cables. He's doing that right now, needs to do that right now, or he'll be a mind isolated in a body that won't obey him. In two days, he'll be fully-functioning, but not until then."

"He keeps punching himself in the mouth."

"Differences in proportions between the old body and the new."

"So – his aim's off?"

'Exactly." Ratchet finished inspecting the monitors, and checked the feeds into Barricade's brand-new energon system. "He's going to sleep through much of the next orn. Shall I call you when he's reliably awake?"

"Please."

But Prowl didn't leave his brother's side until Ratchet kicked him out at shift change, and bore him off to administer a cube of good stuff to them both. Doctor's orders, and don't argue.

* * *

><p>Prowl, however, was not Barricade's first visitor the orn after his reformat. That proved to be Sunstreaker, with a hatchling in each hand, his owner securely situated on his collar fairing, and four in the chestplate carrier Ratchet had copied from humans.<p>

"Hello," the yellow twin said. "Brought you some visitors."

He put them down on the berth. They investigated Barricade, not really sure about him. He _felt_ like their Barricade, but he smelled – different. And he was now a glossy dark green, not their Barricade's black.

The bravest of them, the rust-red hatchling Barricade did not yet realize was his owner, hopped up to the center of his chestplate, where his EM signature was strongest, and cheeped. Hello, friend. Didn't recognize you there for a moment.

Sunstreaker's owner jumped down without waiting for a helping servo, and landed rather hard.

Barricade scooped Nator up with the servo not occupied by his owner, and brought him up to his face to inspect.

His _new_ face. Nator, unnerved, cheeped, and looked to Sunstreaker for reassurance.

Sunstreaker stroked him with a finger. "It's all right," he said.

"You didn't recognize me?" Barricade said. "Here. Here's my EM signature." He placed the little one on his chest.

The hatchling perked up. Oh, yeah. It's you. He lost interest, and demanded his right of ownership again: the best seat in the house, from Nator's point of view.

The two adults grinned at each other.

The other hatchlings eventually jumped up to Barricade's chest one by one. Once there, knowing quickly who he was, they scurried off to put their heads under his chin, and variously chirped, trilled, and purred themselves to sleep.

"I've missed that," Barricade said.

"What, them going to sleep on you?"

"That too, but I meant the little noises."

"They've missed you too. They looked all over for you yesterday." He nodded at Barricade's owner. "That one went into every room in the quarters, chirping for you."

"This guy?" said Barricade, laying hand on his owner. "Sweet."

Barricade, still a tough guy, tired swiftly, but would not admit it. Ratchet knew the signs, and came over. "That'll have to do for now," he said.

Sunstreaker nodded, and began to collect hatchlings. When he attempted to pick up Barricade's owner, however, the hatchling huffed, fluffed, and trilled a warning. _No!_ This was endearing, as well as ridiculous: fluffed, with his plating separated slightly, he wasn't quite the size of Sunstreaker's two hands.

Ratchet smiled. "Let him stay. When you fall asleep" - this to Barricade - "I'll put him in my carrier. Here," he said to Sunstreaker, "you can take my little guy back with you."

Ratchet's owner didn't bother to wake with transfer. After Sunstreaker left, Ratchet checked all of Barricade's monitors, and got a therm-reg blanket for him. As he expected, the hatchling moved under it, and wasn't in any danger of falling.

And Barricade, in the way of the convalescent, was swiftly asleep.

* * *

><p>"Hello," Barricade said, one nap later.<p>

"Hello," Skyfire smiled, and sat. This put the hatchlings in their carrier about optic-level with Barricade, and they had several things to say to him. Sonata, on Skyfire's shoulder, had the last word.

Skyfire laughed, and freed them. Except for Sonata, they all hopped up to Barricade and explored him, each one at least pausing on top of his chestplate to absorb that familiar EM field.

Once again, Barricade had a lei of chirping, purring hatchlings. "Where's the little red guy?" he said. "He fell asleep with me."

"Ratchet brought him back an hour or so ago."

"Ah." Barricade looked subtly disappointed.

"He didn't recharge well last night," Skyfire explained. "After seeing you today, he went down for a nap, and was so deep into recharge I didn't have the heart to wake him."

"Oh." But the tough-guy mask was back in place, Skyfire was disappointed to see. He shrugged mentally, and asked, "You're recovering well?"

"I think so. I've quit punching myself in the faceplates, I can feel and wiggle my toes, and energon tastes really good. But that's all I can tell you."

"Sounds about right," Skyfire said, "for the day after reformat."

"You've been reformatted?"

"No, had a sibling who was."

"Mm."

There was no further conversation for a time. Barricade wasn't asleep, so far as Skyfire could tell, but he had shuttered his optics. His hands moved gently over the hatchlings.

Then stopped, and sometime after that, relaxed. Ten breem or so later, Skyfire began to collect the hatchlings, themselves in or close to recharge. While he was doing that, Sonata glided down onto Barricade's chestplate, stayed there for a moment to absorb his EM, then went to his chin, and rubbed her little faceplates against it.

Greeting over, she returned to Skyfire's shoulder without complaint, and they all went back to hatchling quarters.


	11. Chapter 11

"Okay," said Ratchet. "You're good to go."

Barricade's face lit up, and he said, in a tone of amazement, "Really?" He leapt off the berth he'd called "home" for the last three orn, said, "Thanks, Ratchet!" on his way out, and suddenly was not a patient for the first time since he'd come among the Autobots.

He ran smack into the doorframe, as he was bigger than he used to be. But he bounced right back without a single dent, and was caught and steadied by Sideswipe, detailed to escort him back to his quarters. He corrected course, and was on his way to the rest of his life.

Ratchet grinned. That was the best outcome, so far as he was concerned.

* * *

><p>"I'm not due for a checkup for another decaorn," Barricade said.<p>

"I know that," Ratchet replied, urging him toward a medical berth. "But if you're going to stand a medical shift by yourself, you need comms, and I've been given permission to unlock the short-range ones."

Barricade stopped, struck still. "I'm ... going to stand a shift by myself?" he said, panic in his optics.

"It's the beginning of your residency, so yes. And every mech has that same reaction, first time flying solo," Ratchet said. "I did too. Calm down. You've made the right decisions in all your practica so far." He accessed a port, and got busy with the comms. "You'll do pretty well, I think. And this is a night shift, so if anything happens, and you get hammered, comm us. Aid's backup tonight, but I'm more or less always on duty."

"Okay," Barricade said doubtfully, his respiration and pumpbeat still a little elevated.

Ratchet, tinkering, replied, "If you want me to, I'll make it an order."

Barricade grinned, and his vital signs dropped from "panic" to merely "dealing with Ratchet." "I think I'll be fine," he said. "But you're the doctor. Please yourself."

Ratchet closed the port, and slapped Barricade on the shoulder. "I'd tell you to get out of my med bay," he said with a grin, "but it's your med bay now. Have a good first shift. That's an order."

"Yes, sir," Barricade said, and obeyed him.

* * *

><p>"Take you on as a pupil?" Sunstreaker said. "Someone closer to your own size might be better."<p>

Barricade was roughly Prowl's size, not so very much bigger than his brother, which meant that Sunny had reach and height, about half a head, on him.

Having seen the twin in action, though, Barricade knew that he himself was faster.

"Ratchet said you were the best teacher." Barricade had also wanted to get his hands on that yellow plating for several lunar cycles now, and Nator's growing intolerance of him, Barricade, had led him to believe that this attraction was not one-sided. What better way to initiate a love affair than by knocking your intended around in a ring?

And the appeal to Sunstreaker's vanity worked, as he'd been pretty sure it would. "You want to be trained in hand-to-hand, swords, or pugil sticks?"

"You teach swords, too?"

"Just beginner level. Sides takes over after that. We both teach pugil sticks."

Barricade pretended to think for a moment. "Hand-to-hand."

Fifteen breem later, his feet had been hooked out from under him, and he was flat on his back, with Sunstreaker's body pressed to his.

"Well, slaggit," said his teacher, and kissed him.

* * *

><p>"Unless it's in self- or patient-defense, no," Barricade said firmly. "I'm going to keep sparring, and put in enough time on the range to keep my optic in for using a rifle, but otherwise, I won't fight."<p>

"Primus, not another one of you pacifists!" Ratchet said, throwing up his servos. First Aid grinned at both of them, and swung his legs like a sparkling.

"Well, sorry!" Barricade, who really wasn't, said. "But I don't feel like learning to put mecha back together only to take them apart again with a weapon, or my servos. I've done enough of that."

"I'll let Optimus know," Ratchet said.

"Will he kick me out because of that decision?"

"I highly doubt it. Didn't kick him out" - Ratchet bobbed his head toward First Aid - "and we were in the middle of a war when he decided against fighting."

"He has his gestalt ..."

"You have me and Sunstreaker. That'll be enough."

* * *

><p>The hatchlings, Ratchet said, would officially become sparklings once they learned to speak. The first was the green mech who owned Fireflight.<p>

Ratchet had weighed him, and was about to administer a required vaccination. He said, "Are you ready, Daisy?"

Daisy said, quite politely, "I am not Daisy, I am Greenlight. Please stop calling me by the wrong name."

It surprised both Fireflight and Ratchet, but poor Greenlight got the injection anyway.

Sunstreaker came into the hatchlings' quarters the next afternoon to take Nator for a walk, and was greeted by his owner. "Hey, Nator!" he said.

"Name's not 'Nator,' it's 'Meteor,'" said the ex-Nator, and grinned at him.

Skyfire said, "What is your real name, little girl?" the next morning, when picking up his owner. "We started calling you 'Sonata' just so you'd have a name."

Sonata said, opening her arms wide to pat each of his audial fins simultaneously, "But it's my name now, and I don't want another one. I'm still Sonata!"

Within the decaorn, the others had all volunteered their names. Sonata was the only one who kept her hatchling name.

The last hatchling to begin speaking went to a senior staff meeting with Ratchet, and began to fuss.

The medic looked down at him. "You want your other parent, kid?" he said, and detached the carrier to pass to Prowl.

"My name is Rotary, not 'kid,'" said the new sparkling.

He got a round of applause from the senior staff, and Prowl, grinning as widely as Ratchet, took him out of the carrier, and sat him on his shoulder. Rotary huffed, fluffed his plating, put his arms around Prowl's neck, and hid his little face.

* * *

><p>A vorn and a half later, Barricade, First Aid, and Ratchet all watched as the Aerialbots taught the flighted sparklings their business in the air.<p>

"Okay, now," said Silverbolt, "watch as Slingshot lands. See how his ailerons come down? That slows him in the air until he reaches stall speed, and then he puts his landing gear down. That slows him further. Then he tilts his nose up just a little bit, until his wheels touch down. Once he's down safely, all his wheels on the ground, he gently applies his brakes."

"That looks like fun!" said Meteor, bouncing up and down on his pedes. "Can we try it next?"

Silverbolt smiled. "In a minute. Slingshot's going to show us how he takes off first. You've got to know how to get up before you can get down."

"Okay, but tell him to hurry! I wanna be up there too!"

It became rather immediately obvious, once everyone was in the air, that Sonata and Meteor were in fact Seekers. They literally flew rings around their fellows, and their teachers too: and then each other, apparently for the Seeker hell of it.

Sonata made her first landing with grace and precision, where Meteor put his brakes on too heavily and almost left most of his nose on the tarmac at Hillsboro Airport, southwest of Portland.

It was not so very far from Mt. St. Hilary that Skyfire couldn't fly them all there in alt-mode. The shuttle was among the proud properties who were standing or sitting in another area of the field; the medics, particularly Ratchet, wanted some space.

And Barricade wanted to be unobserved while his pump jumped right up into his oral cavity every time one of his kids hit the tarmac. He'd never really been able to completely shed being a tough guy, and tough guys didn't do that. To his own surprise, he missed Lennox, who had been another tough guy but, being human, had died twenty solar rotations previously.

Yes, Lennox would have known what sending in the rookies was all about ...

The Autobot fire engines were lined up and waiting, with the human-controlled vehicles behind them.

The way humans thought about aircraft fire-suppression made Ratchet shudder. He did _not_ want to be cleaning that gunk out of a sparkling's chassis.

"Here," he said, handing Barricade a data chip when the young fliers took an energon break. "With your last orals coming up, you need to know this - but it's medically sensitive information. If you read it, the memory of doing so gets archived with it, and the whole shebang goes under double-unlock."

Barricade accepted the chip. "Oh," he said. "That makes a lot of sense."

Ratchet and First Aid exchanged optics, and accessed the sparklings' MNA data too. "It does, doesn't it?" said First Aid, with a chuckle.

Meteor, tamer of Sunstreaker, was the offspring of Sideswipe and Starscream. He had sought and found one parent's missing half-spark with the calculated determination of the other.

Sonata was the daughter of Thundercracker and Silverbolt. She was the tallest of the hatchlings, and she and her Autobot genitor had both fallen in love with Skyfire (fortunately, in Sonata's case, it was the love of a child for the mech who is raising her).

And Rotary, the little mech who orbited between Ratchet and Prowl? Jazz and Ironside were his genitors.

They locked away the information and the memory, and watched the sparklings' second flights.

Ratchet never again ached for missing Ironhide, and sometimes wondered why.


	12. Chapter 12

Today's my sparking-day, so I decided to give all of you who have so patiently read and reviewed a present. Unfortunately, this chapter concludes the story ...

If you were born on August 27th too, we share our birthday with Mother Theresa, Lyndon B. Johnson, and former kids' show host (until he was found in flagrante self-delicto in a pron theater) Pee Wee Herman.

Events during the creation of "Cruel," however, showed me that I write better, and certainly longer, when I do not have the Intertubes at my beck and call. (Former computer crashed. Old back-up runs Windows 2K, which is no longer supported by Microsoft, and thus not by the local Evil IPS, with a ca-runch at midnight, August 1.)

I'm still around, just not as frequently.

As for story length, when getting a file on the Tubes is a PITA, by which I emphatically do not mean the bread, it can wait. It can wait long enough to expand the story to its fullest potential, then go back and cut the rubbish out.

Stories, in my experience, are a living creature which has an optimal size. Too big, it wanders. Too small, much is left unsaid. Although there is a case to be made for both the jewel and the sprawling epic, I'm content to allow the living creature coming through my keyboard to tell me how large it should be.

And thus we reach the end of "Cruel."

* * *

><p>Barricade was wakened from a sound recharge by a comm from Ratchet. <em>Get down here. I've got multiple training injuries, and one of the casualties is First Aid.<em>

He rolled off the berth and out the door of his quarters, transformed, and raced through the corridors with lights and siren working, mecha scattering in front of him as he went. Medics always have the right of way.

In med bay, Gears, First Aid, Sunstreaker, and Bumblebee lay on berths. Ratchet was bent over the much smaller figure of Sam Witwicky, but half-turned on his arrival to bark, "Start triage on the 'bots."

Gears' injuries were worst. Barricade was conscious of his lover's eyes on him as he set about doing what was needed, but beyond pain chips for all of them, he couldn't help the others now.

Broken collar strut that had pierced a ventilation chamber, bent back strut cramping two major energon lines, two fractured femoral struts, crushed ulnar strut - the port there was going to require replacement too. He clipped off the ruptured or cut energon lines, mopped up the spill, replaced the lines, replaced the ventilation chamber, got to welding. Just the critical injuries now, the collar strut and back strut. The other repairs would have to wait.

Fifty-four breem later, he moved to First Aid's berth, and began anew. First Aid wasn't conscious; otherwise, he would have found it quite difficult to treat his colleague. This pale face and broken body, though, could be divorced from the affection he held for First Aid.

Somewhere between First Aid and Sunstreaker, he was conscious of Ratchet moving to Bumblebee's berth.

He finished up with First Aid, who blinked awake and tried to get up. "I know the others were hurt -"

Barricade pushed him back down. "It's all taken care of. You just lie there for a little while, okay?"

"Okay." First Aid smiled sheepishly. "I forgot you were a medic."

"I really am, qualified last decaorn. Once everybody's taken care of, I'll show you the certificate." First Aid's optics crinkled a bit at the corners. "You going to stay on the berth?"

"Yeah. No need to show me the certificate. I'll check it for veracity once I'm on my feet."

Barricade grinned at him. "All right. I've got one last patient to see to, then I'll come talk to you."

"All right." First Aid closed his eyes.

Sunstreaker said, by way of greeting, "Took your frellin' time."

"Get hurt worse next time. It puts you higher on the list." Barricade saw his partner smile, and got things going by taking him offline. But Ratchet elbowed him aside.

"Take over with Firstie. Nobody treats family, you know that." The senior medic smiled briefly at him, shouted, "You did good!" at his retreating back.

* * *

><p>Barricade, sinking into recharge two nights later, realized that he had left behind his vorn as a Decepticon, had in fact become an Autobot, sigil or no. More or less while he wasn't watching, but here he was.<p>

His loyalty to Megatron was over and done, and not simply as a result of Megatron's death.

Megatron had possessed a raw charisma exceeded only by Optimus' own. Like many before and after him, Barricade had fallen down that particular rabbit hole. He wondered if, absent Starscream's plans for hm, he would have stayed enslaved to that charisma to the bitter end: the battle of Chicago.

Optimus' crew, though, was held together with more than his own charm. They shared his belief in the rights of the individual, where Megatron had believed only in his own power.

His rust-red owner, Tornado, came into his room, rubbing one fisted servo sleepily in an optic. "Can't 'charge, 'Cade," he said.

Barricade slipped off the berth. "Come here, then," he said, picked up the sparkling, and took him back to his little berth on the wall of Skyfire's quarters. He gently rubbed Tornado's abdominal plates after the little mech was arranged again, and said softly, "Nightmare?"

"No. I jus' woked up, and couldn' get back into recharge."

When singing voices were handed out, Barricade had been standing in the line for extra sarcasm. But he could hum a little, two notes up, three notes down, over and over again, his servo making small light circles on the tiny belly.

He felt it, as much as anything else, when the small body relaxed, the tensions of the day leaving it.

When Tornado was soundly in recharge, he checked out the others; they were all dreaming what he really hoped were sweet dreams.

Starscream, whom he had never liked and who was now dead, had given this to him. He didn't know why.

Optimus had power the equal of Megatron's, but the Prime's power was firmly in the service of life itself, in whatever bodies housed it. Starscream, when the chips were down, had proven himself to be an unlikely ally in that regard.

And Barricade? He was now solidly with the Autobots in the service of life itself, in the form of fourteen sparklings, and however many lives he might save or extend as a medic. In the next vorn, Ratchet was going to begin teaching him human medicine.

He smiled, climbed into his berth, and cuddled back up under Sunstreaker's arm. He'd see about getting a sigil painted next orn. Fortunately, he knew just the 'bot to help him with that.


End file.
